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HX6410736- 
R489.B81  G69        Sir  Thomas  Browne,  b 


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ENGLISH  MEN   OF  LETTERS 
EDITED   BT  JOHN  MORLEY 

SIR    THOMAS  BROWNE 


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ENGLISH  MEN  OF   LETTERS 


SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE 


BY 

EDMUND    GOSSE 


/I        /kjv^ 


Or.  Francis  Huber 

20S  E.  17th  St. 

N.  Y.  City 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

LONDON:  MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Ltd. 
I9OS 

AU  rights  reserved 


COPTEIGHT,  1905, 

By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  October,  1905. 


J.  S.  Gushing  &  Co.  — Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


PKEFATORY  NOTE 

Sir  Thomas  Browne  has  been  particularly  fortunate 
in  his  editors,  but  there  are  two  among  them  whose 
names  can  never  be  mentioned  by  his  admirers  with- 
out gratitude.  Each  had  something  of  the  spirit  and 
the  temperament  of  Browne  himself.  Simon  Wilkin 
(1790-1862)  was  a  paper-maker  and  then  a  printer  in 
Norwich.  His  tastes  were  those  of  a  naturalist  and 
an  antiquary,  and  about  1823  he  was  attracted  to  the 
writings  of  the  great  local  celebrity.  He  found  them 
in  confusion,  and  he  presently  began  to  entertain  the 
idea  of  collecting  and  editing  them.  This  task,  in 
,  the  course  of  twelve  years,  he  accomplished  with  the 
help  of  Thomas  Amyot  (1775-1850),  another  enthusi- 
astic Norwich  antiquary.  Wilkin's  edition,  in  four 
volumes,  appeared  in  1835-36,  and  few  English  classics 
have  been  more  admirably  presented  to  the  public. 

The  other  great  benefactor  to  the  lovers  of  Sir 
Thomas  Browne  is  William  Alexander  Greenhill  (1814- 
1894),  who  was  a  physician  and  a  scholar,  like  Browne 
himself.  Greenhill,  an  Oxford  man,  who  had  been  the 
friend  of  Newman  and  Clough,  Jowett  and  Stanley, 
settled  at  Hastings  in  1851,  and  soon  afterwards  began 
to  devote  himself  to  the  elucidation  of  Browne's  text. 

V 


vi  PREFATORY  NOTE 

For  this  kind  of  work  lie  had  nothing  less  than  genius. 
He  worked  very  slowly,  and  it  was  not  until  1881  that 
he  produced  his  first  instalment,  containing  Beligio 
Medici,  A  Letter  to  a  Friend,  and  Christian  Morals.  He 
went  on  steadily,  but  had  not  quite  finished  Urn- 
Burial  and  The  Garden  of  Cyrus  at  the  time  of  his 
death;  these  were,  however,  completed  by  Mr.  E.  H. 
Marshall,  and  published  in  1896.  Although  GreenhilPs 
annotations  cover  only  a  portion  of  Browne's  works, 
their  sagacity  and  fulness  make  them,  so  far  as  they 
go,  not  merely  valuable  but  indispensable.  It  is 
much  to  be  regretted  that  Greenhill  did  not  survive 
to  perform  the  same  office  for  the  Vulgar  Errors  and 
for  Browne's  Correspondence. 

Several  learned  friends  have  obliged  me  with  tech- 
nical information  in  the  course  of  this  little  mono- 
graph. Acknowledgment  is  made  in  due  course  to 
Sir  Archibald  Geikie,  to  Dr.  Korman  Moore,  and  to 
Dr.  John  Peile,  Master  of  Christ's  College,  Cambridge. 
The  zoological  pages  have  undergone  the  revision  of 
Dr.  P.  Chalmers  Mitchell.  Mr.  James  Pitzmaurice- 
Kelly  has  read  the  proofs  throughout,  to  their  sub- 
stantial advantage.  Por  all  this  kindness  I  tender, 
once  more,  my  warmest  thanks. 

E.  G. 

June,  1905. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 

PAGE 

Early  Years:  1605-1641 1 

CHAPTER   II 
"Religio  Medici" .        .25 

CHAPTER  in 
The  "Vulgar  Errors" 68 

CHAPTER  IV 
"Urn-Burial"  and  "The  Garden  of  Cyrus,"  1658.     102 

CHAPTER  V 
Last  Years  :  1659-1682 139 

CHAPTER  VI 
Posthumous  "Writings  —  Personal  Characteristics    .     166 

CHAPTER  VII 
Language  and  Influence        188 

Index 209 


Vll 


SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE 

CHAPTER  I 

EARLY  YEARS  :    1605-1641 

A  Norfolk  antiquary,  Peter  Le  Neve,  who  became 
Norroy  King-at-Arms,  lias  preserved  for  us  such 
notes  of  the  pedigree  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne  as  were 
interesting  to  himself  in  his  capacity  of  professional 
herald.  It  is  probable  that  Le  ISTeve,  who  was  twenty- 
one  when  Browne  died,  was  personally  acquainted 
with  him,  but,  in  any  case,  as  one  of  the  glories  of 
Norwich,  he  found  the  physician  an  attractive  object. 
Le  Neve  was  not  a  writer,  but  a  collector  of  anti- 
quarian material.  In  our  present  case  we  have  to 
thank  him  for  a  pedigree  which  he  apparently  drew 
up,  as  part  of  the  history  of  Norwich,  soon  after  he 
was  made  Rouge  Croix  Pursuivant  in  1689.  Memories 
of  Browne  were  then  still  fresh,  and  many  of  his 
children  alive.  From  this  document,  supplemented 
by  later  investigation,^  we  learn  that  Sir  Thomas 
descended  from  a  family  of  Cheshire  squires  who  had 
resided  at  Upton  for  four  generations  at  least  before 
his  own;  they  were  entitled  to   bear  arms,  and  had 

1  Mr.  Charles  Williams  has  summed  up  all  that  has  been  dis- 
covered about  The  Pedigree  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne  in  a  privately 
printed  pamphlet  which  he  has  courteously  sent  me.  This  seems 
to  reach  the  limit  of  attainable  knowledge. 

B  1 


2  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

married  into  good  Cheshire  families.  It  is  vaguely 
stated  that  the  physician's  father  "  was  very  nearly 
related  to  the  Countess  of  Devonshire,"  by  whom  I 
suppose  that  Anne  Keighley  may  be  intended.  Sir 
Thomas  Browne  himself  drew  up  a  short  pedigree 
of  his  family  in  1663.  He  shows  himself  to  have 
been  no  herald,  and,  what  is  very  extraordinary,  his 
account  is  full  of  mistakes.  A  man  may  forget  the 
Christian  name  of  his  grandfather  and  the  birthplace 
of  his  mother,  but  he  ought  to  recollect  the  birth  of 
his  eldest  daughter  and  be  correct  as  to  the  ages  and 
order  of  his  sons.  Perhaps  Browne  thought,  in  his 
own  words,  that  "  these  are  niceties  which  become  not 
those  who  peruse  a  serious  mystery."  Eouge  Croix, 
fortunately,  took  the  matter  up  more  gravely. 

The  father  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne,^  who  bore  the 
same  name  as  his  illustrious  son,  was  the  third  of  the 
nine  children  of  that  Thomas  Browne  of  Upton  whose 
name  his  grandson  erroneously  believed  to  have  been 
Richard.  He  himself  was  a  mercer  in  the  parish  of 
St.  Michael-le-Quern,  in  the  city  of  London,  and  he 
married  Anne,  daughter  of  Paul  Garraway,  of  Lewes, 
in  Sussex.  She  may  have  been  a  niece  of  Sir  Henry 
Garraway,  afterwards  Lord  Mayor  of  London.  Young 
Thomas  seems  to  have  been  the  object  of  a  fond  cere- 
mony in  his  childhood,  for  his  daughter,  Mrs.  Lyttleton, 
records,  from  family  report,  that  ^'  his  father  used  to 
open  his  breast  when  he  was  asleep,  and  kiss  it  in 

1  The  spelling  Brown  must  be  looked  upon  as  an  alternative, 
not  as  an  error.  On  more  than  one  title  printed  in  his  life-time  he 
is  named  Thomas  "Brown,"  and  on  the  title-page  of  the  folio 
Works  of  1686,  where,  if  ever,  the  correct  form  is  to  be  expected, 
we  find  the  author  styled  "  S'  Thomas  Brown  Kt." 


1.]  EARLY  YEARS  3 

prayers  over  him,  as  'tis  said  of  Origen's  father,  that 
the  Holy  Ghost  would  take  possession  there."  The 
only  other  trace  of  Browne's  infancy  which  can  be 
gathered  refers  to  his  maternal  grandfather.  He 
wrote,  in  the  last  year  of  his  life,  "  I  remember,  when 
I  was  very  young,  and,  I  think,  but  in  coats,  my 
mother  carried  me  to  my  grandfather  Garraway's 
house  in  Lewes.  I  retain  only  in  my  mind  the  idea 
of  some  rooms  of  the  house,  and  of  the  church."  The 
Cheshire  estates  passed  to  the  elder  brother  of  the 
mercer,  Richard  Browne  of  Upton,  and  Thomas,  it  is 
evident,  had  gone  up  to  London  to  make  his  own 
living  by  trade.  From  his  marriage  with  Anne 
Garraway  he  had  four  children,  of  whom  the  illus- 
trious physician  was  the  youngest. 

Thomas  Browne  was  born  in  the  parish  of  "St. 
Michaels  Cheap  "  —  as  St.  Michael-le-Quern,  Cheapside, 
was  commonly  called  —  on  the  19th  of  October  1605. 
The  first  decade  of  the  seventeenth  century  was  not 
very  rich  in  the  births  of  literary  men.  Randolph  was 
born  a  few  months  earlier  than  Browne;  Chilling- 
worth  three  years  earlier;  the  next  four  years  saw 
the  successive  births  of  Davenant,  Waller,  Milton, 
and  Clarendon.  These  very  incongruous  names  may 
help  to  suggest  to  us  the  disparate  intellectual  ele- 
ments which  were  to  be  characteristic  of  English 
thought  during  Browne's  life-time.  The  mercer  of 
Cheapside  died  early,  but  in  what  year  is  not  recorded ; 
when  young  Thomas  was  nineteen  the  head  of  the 
family,  Richard  Browne  of  Upton,  also  died,  and  this 
may  account  for  the  neglect  of  which  we  hear.  Sir 
Thomas's  first  biographer  assures  us,  we  know  not  on 
what  authority,  that,  "  according  to  the  common  fate  of 


4  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

orphans,  he  was  defrauded  by  one  of  his  guardians,"  his 
fortune  at  his  father's  death  having  been  two-thirds  of 
£9000.  His  widowed  mother  soon  married  Sir  Thomas 
Dutton,  of  Gloucester  and  Isleworth,  who  "enjoyed  an 
honourable  post  in  the  Government  of  Ireland."  The 
statement  of  Johnson  that  Browne  was  "  left  to  the 
rapacity  of  his  guardian,  deprived  now  of  both  his 
parents,  and  therefore  helpless  and  unprotected,"  has 
always  been  accepted,  although  it  is  only  supported  by 
a  much  milder  statement  of  Whitef  oot's.  If  Lady  Dut- 
ton took  her  widow's  third,  there  were  left  £6000,  not 
for  Thomas  alone,  but  for  her  four  children.  Thomas 
was  well  educated  and  able  to  travel  freely ;  if  his 
mother  abandoned  him,  and  his  guardian  defrauded  him 
of  the  greater  part  of  his  £1500,  it  is  diflB.cult  to  know 
what  were  his  sources  of  income.  Moreover,  there  is 
evidence  that  he  remained  on  intimately  friendly  terms 
with  his  step-father  until  the  death  of  the  latter  in  1634. 
If  the  Paul  Garraway  who  died  in  1620  was  Thomas 
Browne's  grandfather,  it  is  possible  that  the  boy,  who 
was  then  at  Winchester,  profited  by  the  distribution  of 
his  wealth.  All  must  be  left  to  conjecture,  but  there 
is  certainly  no  evidence  of  poverty. 

Of  the  youth  of  Thomas  Browne,  unhappily,  no 
particulars  have  been  preserved  beyond  the  bare  fact 
that  he  was  admitted  to  a  scholarship  at  Winchester, 
on  the  20th  of  August  1616,  and  that  he  proceeded 
six  years  later  to  Oxford,  where,  early  in  1623,  he 
matriculated  as  a  fellow-commoner  of  Broadgates  Hall, 
the  name  by  which  what  became  Pembroke  College 
during  Browne's  stay  at  Oxford  was  originally  known. 
It  appears,  also,  that  Thomas  Lushington,  afterwards 
a  distinguished  divine,  but  then  a  young  graduate 


I.]  EARLY  YEARS  5 

of  Lincoln  College,  was  his  tutor.  That  Browne 
was  distinguished  early  for  his  learning  appears  from 
an  expression  of  Anthony  a  Wood,  while  Dr.  Johnson, 
proud  of  his  own  connection  with  Pembroke,  and 
having  remarked  that  Browne  was  the  first  man  of 
^  eminence  graduated  from  the  new  college,  characteris- 
tically continues,  "  to  which  the  zeal  or  gratitude  of 
those  that  love  it  most  can  wish  little  better  than  that 
it  may  long  proceed  as  it  began."  Browne's  taking  the 
degree  of  bachelor,  the  event  thus  enthusiastically 
referred  to,  occurred  on  the  30th  of  June  1626,  and 
he  proceeded  master  on  the  11th  of  June  1629. 

It  was  probably  between  these  last  two  dates  that 
Thomas  Browne  accompanied  his  step-father.  Sir 
Thomas  Dutton,  to  Ireland.  Dutton  seems  to  have 
been  a  man  of  unbridled  temper,  whose  "mutinous 
and  unworthy  courage  "  in  the  camp  before  Juliers 
had  been  severely  stigmatised  in  despatches  by  Sir 
Edward  Cecil.  He,  "upon  base  advantage,  hurt  Sir 
Hatton  Cheke,  his  colonel,"  and,  being  challenged  to 
duel  after  the  campaign  was  over,  he  killed  Cheke 
upon  Calais  Sands.  This  was  in  1610,  but  at  a  much 
later  date,  the  turbulent  knight,  as  we  have  seen, 
"enjoyed  an  honourable  post  in  the  government  of 
Ireland."  There  may  have  been  a  later  duel,  for  an 
incident  of  this  kind  is  believed  to  have  inspired  his 
step-son  with  a  copy  of  verses  among  the  Sloane 
Manuscripts  of  which  the  following  alone  seem  to  be 
in.  a  coherent  form  :  — 

"  Diseases  are  the  arms  whereby 
We  naturally  do  fall  and  die.  .  ,  . 
Men,  for  me,  again  shall  chime 
To  Jared's  or  Methuselah's  time ; 


6  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

That  thread  of  life  the  Fates  do  twine 
Their  gentle  hands  shall  clip,  not  mine. 
O  let  me  never  know  the  cruel 
And  heedless  villany  of  duel ; 
Or  if  I  must  that  fate  sustain, 
Let  me  be  Abel,  and  not  Cain." 

The  poetical  value  of  these  verses  is  not  great,  but 
they  have  the  interest  not  merely  of  occurring  in  the 
earliest  specimen  of  Browne's  composition  which  we 
possess,  but  of  being  curiously  characteristic  of  him  as 
a  physician,  as  a  philosopher,  and  as  a  passive  resister. 
In  attendance  upon  the  fierce  Sir  Thomas  Dutton, 
young  Browne  paid  a  visit  to  the  castles  and  fortifica- 
tions of  Ireland.  This  would  probably  be  at  the  close 
of  1626,  after  the  rupture  with  France,  when  the  coast 
defences  were  attracting  the  attention  of  a  special 
commission  of  inquiry.  At  so  favourable  an  age  for 
observation,  and  under  such  interesting  conditions,  it 
is  to  be  supposed  that  Browne  saw  and  noted  many 
things,  but  it  cannot  be  said  that  this  tour  of  Irish 
inspection  has  left  much  trace  upon  his  writings.  He 
remarks,  indeed,  that  Ireland  is  free  from  toads  and 
snakes,  but  that  was  notorious ;  it  is  a  personal  touch, 
however,  which  assures  us  that  the  belief  that  there 
are  no  spiders  in  Ireland  is  a  vulgar  error,  since  he 
has  seen  them  there  himself.  Like  many  choleric 
people,  it  is  possible  that  Sir  Thomas  Dutton  could 
make  himself  very  pleasant  when  he  was  not  crossed. 
The  even  temper  of  Browne  would  seem  to  have  as- 
suaged him,  for  the  report  of  Dutton  long  afterwards 
in  the  physician's  family,  was  that  he  had  shown  him- 
self "  a  worthy  person." 

As  a  boy  Thomas  Browne  had  begun  to  study  the 


I.]  EARLY  YEARS  7 

botany  of  the  day,  but  "had  scarcely  ever  simpled 
further  than  Cheapside."  It  is  understood  that  he 
turned  his  attention  to  medicine  while  he  was  still  at 
Oxford,  and  it  is  stated  that  he  even  practised  as  a 
physician  in  Oxfordshire.  But  this  seems  unlikely,  as 
he  had  taken  no  medical  degree,  and.  as  the  technical 
education  offered  to  her  students  by  the  university  of 
Oxford  was  meagre  indeed.  It  consisted  solely  of  a 
little  perfunctory  reading  of  Hippocrates  and  Galen 
in  the  original.  There  was  no  hospital  at  Oxford  and 
therefore  no  clinical  school ;  the  very  study  of  drugs 
and  plants  was  of  a  primitive  character.  If  Browne 
went  through  the  poverty-stricken  classes  of  Oxford 
medical  teaching,  it  could  only  have  been  to  assure 
himself  of  their  worthlessness.  His  writings  may  be 
searched  in  vain  for  the  slightest  sign  of  loyalty  to 
Oxford  or  gratitude  for  anything  she  taught  him.  The 
only  possible  mark  of  approval  is  the  fact  that  in  1666 
he  sent  his  son  Edward  to  Merton.  What  is  most 
likely  is,  that  having  tested  the  medical  training  of 
Oxford,  and  having  found  it  useless,  he  buried  himself 
in  his  books.  His  extraordinary  learning  is  seen  to 
be  of  a  kind,  and  to  extend  in  a  direction,  which  are 
never  due  to  teachers  but  to  the  original  initiative  of 
the  student.  Preparing  for  a  long  course  of  study 
abroad,  Browne  would  steep  his  memory  in  all  the 
scientific  learning  of  the  age,  so  as  to  profit  without 
any  loss  of  time  by  whatever  revelations  might  await 
him  in  France  and  Italy. 

The  general  cessation  of  hostilities  made  it  easy  to 
travel  through  Europe  in  1630,  at  all  events  in  the 
west  and  south.  There  was  a  revival  of  trade  with  the 
Biscay  an  ports,  and  we  may  conjecture  that  Browne 


8  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

sailed  directly  to  La  Kochelle,  partly  because  he  speaks 
of  having  visited  that  town,  and  partly  because  he 
discusses  the  difficulty  of  spending  time  well  on  board 
great  ships,  an  experience  which  fits  in  nowhere  else 
in  his  career.  We  find  him  at  length  at  Montpellier, 
and  this  seems  an  excellent  opportunity  for  quoting 
the  very  remarkable  passage  in  which,  soon  after  his 
long  residence  on  the  Continent,  he  reviewed  his  own 
attitude  towards  foreign  habits  and  customs :  — 

"  I  have  no  antipathy,  or  rather  idiosyncracy  in  diet, 
humour,  air,  anything.  I  wonder  not  at  the  French  for  their 
dishes  of  frogs,  snails,  and  toadstools,  nor  at  the  Jews  for 
locusts  and  grasshoppers ;  but,  being  among  them,  make  them 
my  common  viands,  and  I  find  they  agree  with  my  stomach  as 
well  as  theirs.  I  could  digest  a  salad  gathered  in  a  church- 
yard as  well  as  in  a  garden.  I  cannot  start  at  the  presence 
of  a  serpent,  scorpion,  lizard,  or  salamander.  At  the  sight  of 
a  toad  or  viper,  I  find  in  me  no  desire  to  take  up  a  stone  to 
destroy  them.  I  feel  not  in  myself  those  common  antipathies 
that  I  can  discover  in  others ;  those  national  repugnances  do 
not  touch  me,  nor  do  I  behold  with  prejudice  the  French, 
Italian,  Spaniard,  or  Dutch ;  but  where  I  find  their  actions  in 
balance  with  my  countrymen's,  I  honour,  love,  and  embrace 
them  in  the  same  degree.  I  was  born  in  the  eighth  climate,^ 
but  seem  for  to  be  formed  and  constellated  unto  all.  I  am  no 
plant  that  will  not  prosper  out  of  a  garden.  All  places,  all 
airs,  make  unto  me  one  country.  I  am  in  England  every- 
where and  under  any  meridian.  I  have  been  shipwrecked, 
yet  am  not  enemy  to  sea  or  winds.  I  can  study,  play,  or 
sleep  in  a  tempest.  In  brief,  I  am  averse  from  nothing.  My 
conscience  would  give  me  the  lie  if  I  should  say  I  absolutely 
detest  or  hate  any  essence  but  the  Devil ;  or  so  at  least  abhor 
anything,  but  that  we  might  come  to  composition." 

1  That  is  to  say  in  the  eighth  degree  of  latitude :  Anglia  sub 
climate  octavo  sita  est,  as  Moltkius  explained  in  the  Latin  edition 
of  1652. 


I.]  EARLY  YEARS  9 

When  Browne  arrived  at  Montpellier,  the  "  fair  city, 
two  parasangs  from  the  sea/'  that  its  early  historians 
had  loved  to  praise,  he  found  it  greatly  fallen  from  its 
high  estate.  The  proud  days  were  gone  by  when 
James  i.,  King  of  Aragon,  had  exclaimed  in  an  ecstasy, 
"Monspessulanus  est  una  de  melioribus  villis  totius 
mundi ! "  Already,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  after 
Montpellier  passed  away  from  the  Kings  of  Majorca, 
the  famous  sea-trade  was  immensely  reduced,  and  the 
splendid  natural  harbour  of  Cette  (then  called  Sette) 
had  grown  to  be  a  dangerous  rival.  Montpellier  was 
hardly  to  be  considered  any  longer,  what  it  had  been 
since  classic  days,  the  main  trading-centre  of  Lan- 
guedoc,  and  its  commerce  had  grown  to  be  chiefly 
local  even  before  its  calamities  fell  upon  it.  What 
these  last  had  been,  all  visitors  in  the  early  seven- 
teenth century  could  see  for  themselves.  The  religious 
war  in  1596  had  broken  and  scarred  it  in  every 
direction,  and  in  1621,  while  Browne  was  at  Win- 
chester, the  vast  suburbs,  full  of  churches  and  palaces, 
which  extended  on  all  sides  of  the  old  town,  were 
demolished,  and  every  building  up  to  the  ancient 
enceinte  was  razed  to  the  ground.  It  was  to  a  Mont- 
pellier that  was  raw  without,  and  sadly  withered  and 
meagre  within,  that  the  medical  students  of  the  world 
were  still  faithfully  flocking. 

For,  if  the  city  and  its  civic  prestige  were  under  a 
dark  cloud  of  disaster,  the  great  Faculty  of  Medicine 
remained  untouched.  Indeed,  the  bounty  of  Louis 
XIII.  had  quite  recently  encouraged  it  with  fresh 
grants  and  privileges.  It  was,  as  it  had  been  for 
centuries,  one  of  the  ornaments  of  France.  Its  history 
was,  in  great  part,  the  history  of  medicine  in  Europe. 


10  SIR   THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

Montpellier  liad  been  in  constant  touch  witli  the 
Greeks,  and  then  with  the  Komans,  and  then  with  the 
Arabs,  until  the  fall  of  Arabic  science,  when  it  stepped 
into  the  vacant  place.  As  a  school  of  surgery  and 
medicine,  it  had  its  limitations  in  the  days  when  fresh 
light  was  streaming  in  on  all  sides;  some  of  the 
windows  of  thought  in  Montpellier  were  shuttered 
against  the  sunshine  in  1630.  Its  schools  had  never 
been  strong  in  chemistry,  and  it  was  not  until  long 
after  Browne  left  that  any  lectures  or  demonstrations 
in  this  subject  were  given  at  Montpellier.  Nor  did 
any  of  its  professors  take  a  prominent  part  in  that 
great  revolution  in  the  physics  and  theory  of  medicine 
which  made  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century 
so  illustrious  in  Italy.  But  nowhere  else  in  the  world 
was  the  new  science  of  botany  studied  so  thoroughly 
as  at  Montpellier,  whose  Eoyal  Garden  was  the  oldest 
in  Europe;  this,  too,  was  the  medical  school  where 
public  demonstrations  had  first  been  given  in  ana- 
tomy. The  basal  training  in  the  profession  was  more 
thorough  at  Montpellier  than  anywhere  else  in  the 
world,  and  consequently  vast  numbers  of  students 
met  there  every  year  to  go  through  the  preliminary 
course. 

In  order  to  proceed  to  the  baccalaureate  degree,  a 
residence  of  three  years  was  necessary.  But  few  of 
those  foreigners  who  flocked  to  Montpellier  had  the 
intention  of  making  so  long  a  stay.  For  their  con- 
venience, the  whole  course  of  medicine  commenced  and 
ended  within  twelve  months,  which  enabled  a  student 
to  go  on  for  further  work  to  Italy  or  Holland.  The 
courses  always  began  about  October,  at  which  time,  in 
1630,  we  may  confidently  believe  that  Browne  arrived. 


I.]  EARLY   YEARS  11 

There  was  an  old  traditional  connection  between 
Oxford  and  Montpellier,  and  it  is  to  be  supposed  that 
the  young  man  was  introduced  by  his  teachers  at  the 
English  University.  The  intellectual  life  at  Mont- 
pellier  had  been  steadily  growing  more  liberal,  in  spite 
of  the  ravages  of  the  religious  wars.  The  Faculty  of 
Medicine  was  entirely  distinct  from  the  university  of 
the  town,  and  from  the  clerical  authorities ;  it  was 
itself  allowed  to  bear  the  name  of  University,  and  its 
students  were  under  no  regular  religious  inspection. 
It  had  resisted  the  innovations  of  Paracelsus,  and  the 
temptation  to  join  in  any  theological  disputes ;  it  held 
that  all  it  gave  to  its  students  was  the  benefit  of  a 
practical  knowledge  of  the  human  body.  There  had 
been  a  reaction  against  the  general  Calvinism  of  an 
earlier  time;  but  in  1629,  the  year  before  Browne's 
arrival,  the  laxity  of  faith  persisting  among  the  Mont- 
pellier  students  had  led  the  Jesuits  to  take  charge 
of  such  education  in  Theology  as  the  University  of 
Medicine  admitted.  But  Montpellier  was  still  as 
tolerant  a  place  as  a  young  Protestant  of  liberal  views 
could  visit. 

The  students  were  at  that  time  taught  by  the  six 
regius  professors,  all  of  them  men  whose  salaries  were 
not  merely  small,  but  steadily  diminishing,  and  who 
had  to  look  to  the  exercise  of  the  profession  for  their 
emoluments.  The  old  system  of  instruction  had 
given  place  to  a  mode  of  teaching  which  was  wholly 
practical,  and  which  must  have  resembled  that  at  our 
great  hospitals  to-day.  The  object  was  to  make  the 
student  master  of  the  groundwork  of  his  business 
as  a  physician  or  a  surgeon,  not  to  fill  his  mind 
with  miscellaneous  scholastic  knowledge.     It  was  this 


12  SIR  THOMAS   BROWNE  [chap. 

severe  practical  training,  enforced  by  means  of  tough 
examinations,  which  made  Montpellier  almost  indis- 
pensable in  those  days  to  foreign  students,  who  could 
get  no  training  like  it  anywhere  else  in  Europe.  We 
may  note  that  it  was  Lazare  Eiviere  whose  lectures  on 
medicine  our  student  attended.  This  excellent  practi- 
tioner, the  "Eiverius"  of  Browne's  correspondence, 
was  professor  at  Montpellier  from  1622  to  1655.  His 
Praxis  Medica,  long  the  text-book  in  the  schools,  un- 
questionably represents  the  identical  lectures  to  which 
the  future  author  of  Religio  Medici  listened. 

At  the  time  that  Browne  studied  at  Montpellier,  the 
school  of  that  faculty  taught  that  the  life  distributed 
through  the  body  was  due  to  an  organic  soul,  the  "  vital 
principle"  of  which  animated  the  tissues,  and  gave 
warmth  and  movement  to  the  body.  This  was  the 
theory  of  "  vitalism"  which  Descartes  rejected ;  and  at 
a  little  later  date  than  the  time  we  are  discussing,  the 
school  of  Montpellier  was  invaded  by  Cartesian  ideas, 
and  the  theory  of  '^  vitalism  "  was  routed,  not  without 
angry  controversy.  But  it  is  interesting  to  see  that 
Browne,  who  imbibed  the  Montpellier  tuition  at  a 
tender  age,  remained  somewhat  impressed  by  this 
notion  of  the  organic  soul,  which  alone  makes  some 
passages  of  his  writings  still  intelligible  to  us.^ 

Erom  Montpellier,  Browne  passed  on  to  the  famous 
university  of  Padua,  then  esteemed  the  centre  of  the 
world  of  science.     If,  as  we  have  every  reason  to  sup- 

1  Much  in  this  account  of  the  .state  of  Montpellier  in  the 
early  part  of  the  seventeenth  century  has  been  collected  from 
M^moires  pour  servir  a  VHistoire  de  la  Faculte  de  Me'decine  de 
Montpellier,  a  posthumous  work  by  the  medical  antiquary,  Jean 
Astruc  (1684-1766) .  Access  to  this  rare  volume  I  owe  to  the  kind- 
ness of  my  friend,  Dr.  Norman  Moore. 


I.]  EARLY  YEARS  13 

pose,  his  three  years  of  continental  study  were  equally 
divided,  we  may  think  of  him  as  in  Padua  from  the 
autumn  of  1631  to  that  of  1632.  Education  was 
splendidly  endowed  in  this  noble  city,  which  flourished 
under  the  sway  of  the  Venetian  State.  We  are  told 
that  it  was  considered  a  dull  year  in  the  course  of 
which  more  than  one  thousand  new  students  did  not 
matriculate  at  the  university.  It  was  in  Padua  that 
for  upwards  of  a  century  young  men  from  all  parts  of 
Europe  had  received  surgical  teaching  such  as  could 
nowhere  else  be  supplied.  Our  own  John  Gains  had 
studied  there,  and  had  enjoyed  the  inestimable  privi- 
lege of  lodging  for  eight  months  under  the  roof  of  the 
illustrious  Yesalius.  It  was  the  genius  of  this  extra- 
ordinary man  (Andrea  Yesale),  which  had  given  Italy, 
and  especially  Padua,  the  pre-eminence  in  all  branches 
of  surgical  and  anatomical  science  during  the  sixteenth 
century.  He  had  started  that  bold  opposition  to  the 
dry  doctrine  of  Galen  which  appeared  at  first  so  scan- 
dalous a  heresy,  and  was  met  by  so  many  cries  of 
horror.  It  had  been  continued  by  his  great  disciples, 
particularly  by  Columbo,  Eustachio,  and  G-abriele 
Falloppio,  all  glories  of  the  school  of  Padua.  It  was 
Eealdo  Columbo  who  first  vivisected  dogs  with  a  view 
to  the  investigation  of  human  maladies,  and  in  later 
years  Browne  seems  to  have  particularly  recommended 
him  as  a  guide  to  his  own  pupils.  But  Falloppio  sur- 
passed all  his  predecessors  in  the  ingenuity  of  his 
discoveries,  and  he  had  been  succeeded  by  G-irolamo 
Fabrizio  of  Acquapendente,  the  forerunner  and  master 
of  our  own  Harvey. 

Three  generations  of  professors  of  this  intrepid  class 
had  placed   Padua  easily   at  the  head  of  European 


14  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

science.  Since  the  days  of  Harvey,  indeed,  who  had 
studied  there  under  Fabrizio  from  1598  to  1600,  if  the 
school  of  surgery  had  not  positively  declined,  it  had 
grown  stationary.  But  physiology  and  anatomy  had 
not  relaxed  their  efforts;  and  the  most  eminent  of 
living  surgeons,  Pietro  Marchetti,  had  already  begun 
his  work  there  as  a  teacher,  succeeding  Spieghel 
(Spigelius),  who  had  died  in  1625.  Columbo  had  said 
that  more  was  to  be  learned  from  one  vivisection  than 
from  all  the  writings  of  Galen ;  and  it  was  the  clinical 
teaching  which  still  upheld  the  unrivalled  prestige  of 
Padua.  Nowhere  else  in  Europe  could  the  progress 
of  disease  be  studied  to  such  advantage ;  the  students 
visited  the  hospitals,  and  had  the  symptoms  detailed 
before  their  eyes.  The  Venetian  Republic  protected 
science  against  the  attacks  and  insinuations  of  the 
Church;  and  amusing  tales  were  told  of  such  state 
defiance  to  fanaticism  as  could  nowhere  out  of  Venice 
be  hoped  for.  There  was  an  anatomical  theatre,  a  sort 
of  wooden  barrack,  which  could  hold  an  immense  con- 
course of  students;  this  was  rebuilt  every  year,  and 
was  one  of  the  sights  of  the  city. 

Nor  were  medicine  and  botany  neglected,  though 
not  so  prominently  encouraged.  Browne  must  have 
attended  the  lectures  of  Sanctoro  Sanctorio,  the 
friend  of  Galileo,  and  must  have  argued  with  his 
fellow-students  about  the  professor's  Medicina  Statica, 
then  lately  published,  a  work  over  which  Europe  was 
still  wrangling.  There  was  a  great  garden  of  herbs, 
oval  in  shape,  of  which  the  Paduans  were  very  proud. 
This  was  already  under  the  charge  of  John  Wesling, 
who  lectured  in  it,  and  who  became  a  little  later  on 
professor  of  botany.     He  was  still  eminent  in  Padua 


I.]  EAKLY  YEARS  15 

when  Evelyn  visited  the  city  in  1645  and  wrote  down 
in  his  Diary  so  delightful  an  account  of  what  he  saw. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  strenuous  intellectual 
life  of  Padua,  so  different  from  anything  he  had  ex- 
perienced in  Oxford,  made  its  life-long  impression  on 
Browne.  Everything  there  was  calculated  to  awaken 
a  philosophical  imagination.  The  schools  of  surgery 
and  medicine,  to  which  his  daily  labours  took  him, 
were  held  in  the  buildings  around  a  great  quadrangle, 
with  columns  above,  and,  underneath,  cloisters  where 
eager  students  accompanied  the  professors,  and  dis- 
cussed results.  The  arms  of  the  Venetian  Eepublic 
were  over  the  great  gate,  and  the  Lion  of  St.  Mark 
dominated  all.  But  what  we  can  fancy  was  most  in 
sympathy  with  Browne's  habit  of  mind  was  the  famous 
inscription  under  which  every  student  had  to  pass,  in 
going  and  coming,  reminding  him  that  he  must  so 
enter  as  to  become  each  day  more  learned  than  he  was 
before,  and  so  learn  as  to  be  more  useful  to  his  father- 
land and  to  the  state. 

From  Padua  Browne  proceeded  northward  to  the 
comparatively  new  university  of  Leyden,  which  had 
lately  developed  educational  facilities  that  made  it  of 
great  importance  to  students  of  medicine.  One  advan- 
tage of  coming  to  the  Dutch  university  from  Italy  was 
the  obtaining  of  fresh  points  of  view  for  the  observation 
of  theoretical  science.  Against  the  great  surgical  and 
anatomical  schools  of  Montpellier  and  Padua,  it  was 
urged  that  they  neglected  chemistry.  There  was  little 
jjlace  for  it  in  their  curriculum.  The  physiatric  system 
of  the  Italian  professors  was  the  complete  opposite  of 
that  chemical  system  which  now  flourished  at  Leyden, 
under  the  celebrated  Jan  Baptista  van  Helmont,  whose 


16  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

lectures  Browne  must  have  attended.  Pieter  van 
Foreest,  the  earliest  professor  of  medicine  in  the  new 
university,  had  traced  the  path  of  the  science  at  Ley  den, 
where  what  must  have  especially  interested  Browne  was 
the  general  enthusiasm  for  chemical  facts.  Everything 
was  leading  up  towards  the  system  of  therapeutics  to 
be  presently  developed  by  the  celebrated  Sylvius 
(Francis  de  le  Boe),  with  his  universal  attribution  of 
disease  to  acidity,  to  the  presence  of  acrimonious 
fluids  in  the  animal  structure.  Sylvius,  a  student  of 
precocious  parts,  some  years  younger  than  Browne, 
must  have  entered  at  Leyden  while  Browne  was  there. 
There  was  a  small  infirmary  with  twelve  beds  at 
Leyden,  and  this  would  be  serviceable  to  strangers 
like  Browne,  although  it  was  not  until  some  years  later 
that  Sylvius  invented  the  modern  practice  of  ^^  walking 
the  hospital,"  by  taking  his  pupils  "  by  the  hand  "  to 
medical  practice  from  bedside  to  bedside.  It  is  quite 
possible  that  Browne  may  have  met  Descartes  at 
Leyden.  The  Frenchman  went  there  in  1629,  and 
though  he  moved  about  to  Amsterdam  and  Utrecht, 
Leyden  was  his  headquarters  till  the  parsons  made  it 
too  uncomfortable  for  him  in  1649.  Before  Browne 
left  Leyden,  he  took  his  degree  of  doctor  of  medicine 
there,  and  soon  after,  probably  in  the  autumn  of  1633, 
he  returned  to  England. 

We  cannot  overrate  the  importance  of  what  the 
peculiar  temperament  of  Thomas  Browne  owed  to  this 
prolonged  foreign  travel  and  this  commerce  with  exotic 
schools  of  thought.  An  ordinary  young  Englishman, 
of  insular  temper,  might  take  the  grand  tour  in  all 
its  divisions,  and  return  as  narrow  as  he  went  forth. 
But  Browne,  to  a  greater  extent,  perhaps,  than  any 


I.]  EARLY  YEARS  17 

other  man  of  his  generation,  was  prepared  by  nature 
to  break  the  bonds  of  intellectual  convention  upon 
the  least  possible  encouragement.  It  was  therefore  of 
unsurpassed  advantage  to  him  that  he  had,  in  his 
riper  years  and  confirmed  judgment,  seen,  as  he  says, 
and  examined  all  that  the  fermenting  scientific  world 
of  France  and  Italy  and  Flanders  had  to  offer  of  what 
was  curious  and  new.  He  was  able,  without  painful 
effort,  to  throw  off,  or  to  keep  from  acquiring,  the  mental 
prejudices  which  were  typical  of  the  strenuous,  strait- 
ened English  tradition  of  the  early  seventeenth  century. 
As  a  youth,  at  Montpellier,  he  had  been  confronted  by 
those  symbols  of  the  Catholic  religion  which  it  was  so 
difficult  for  English  Puritans  of  his  class  to  put  up 
with.  But  Browne  soon  learned  to  take  his  hat  off 
whenever  a  cross  or  crucifix  was  carried  past  him  in  the 
street.  He  could  not  bring  himself  to  laugh  at,  but 
was  rather  constrained  to  pity,  "the  fruitless  journeys 
of  pilgrims,"  while  "  the  miserable  condition  of  friars  " 
appealed  to  his  sympathy  and  not  to  his  scorn.  Look- 
ing back  upon  his  years  in  France  and  Italy,  Protestant 
and  Englishman  as  he  was,  he  has  to  confess :  "  I  could 
never  hear  the  Ave-Mary  bell  without  an  elevation," 
and  he  tells  us  how  careful  he  always  was  to  avoid 
wounding  the  conscience  of  those  around  him  by 
"  silence  and  dumb  contempt." 

In  all  this  Browne  was  unique  in  his  generation. 
The  behaviour  of  Englishmen  in  the  Latin  countries 
might  certainly  be  considered  courageous,  for  it  often 
led  them  into  dangerous  predicaments,  but  it  was 
not  sympathetic.  At  Montpellier,  the  other  English 
students,  when  they  saw  a  solemn  procession  pass  along 
the   streets,  distinguished  themselves  by  "  an  excess 


18  SIE   THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

of  scorn  and  laughter."  Browne,  on  these  occasions, 
agitated  alike  by  the  emotion  of  the  rite  and  by  sorrow 
at  the  prejudice  of  his  fellow-countrymen,  had  been  so 
much  overcome  as  to  "weep  abundantly."  His  peace- 
able spirit  desired  to  learn  rather  than  to  dogmatise ; 
above  all,  it  desired  to  comprehend  and  to  feel,  to 
distinguish  and  to  penetrate,  the  genuine  sensations  of 
others,  not  in  the  temper  of  a  judge  but  in  that  of  a 
physician.  He  had  argued  with  Franciscan  monks  in 
France  without  loss  of  temper  upon  either  side,  and 
with  doctors  of  physic  in  Italy,  "who  could  not  per- 
fectly believe  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  because  Galen 
seemed  to  make  a  doubt  thereof."  He  had  observed 
the  singular  case  of  "  a  divine,  and  a  man  of  singular 
parts,  who  was  so  plunged  and  gravelled  with  three 
lines  of  Seneca"  that  all  the  antidotes  which  Browne 
produced  from  human  and  divine  philosophy  "could 
not  expel  the  poison  of  his  error."  On  these,  and 
a  thousand  other  incidents  of  foreign  manners,  the 
heart  of  the  wise  youth  brooded,  and  he  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  each  country  hath  its  Machiavelli, 
each  age  its  Lucian,  and  that  we  ought  to  try  every 
spirit. 

He  came  back  to  England  in  1633 ;  and  in  that  year 
the  posthumous  Poems  of  Dr.  Donne  were  published. 
To  the  first  edition  of  this  popular  work  (and  to  the 
first  edition  only)  were  appended  some  curious  lines 
signed  "  Tho :  Browne."  When  the  sequence  of  "  Elegies 
upon  the  Author  "  was  reprinted,  this  copy  of  verses 
alone  was  suppressed,  and  it  appears  to  be  unknown  to 
readers  of  Donne  and  of  Browne.  The  lines  form  an 
apology  for  those  looser  writings  of  his  youth  which 
were  a  scandal  to  the  admirers  of  the  great  Dean  of 


I.]  EARLY  YEARS  19 

St.  Paul's.  In  a  spirit  of  great  indulgence  the  youthful 
poet  tells  the  ghost  of  Donne  that  he  feels  no  inclination 
to  blame  or  wonder 

"  at  this  strange  fire 
That  here  is  mingled  with  thy  sacrifice. 
But  dare  read  even  thy  wanton  story 
As  thy  confession,  not  thy  glory." 

The  ingenuity  of  excuse,  and  the  moderation  which 
hates  to  find  fault,  seem  characteristic  of  the  author  of 
Beligio  Medici.  These  lines,  which  have  as  much  or  as 
little  merit  as  Browne's  customary  efforts  at  poetry, 
were  omitted  in  later  editions  of  Donne,  no  doubt 
because  it  was  held  indiscreet  to  draw  such  particular 
attention  to  the  divine's  "  poems  of  the  looser  sort." 

It  was  now,  perhaps,  that  Browne  practised  physic 
for  a  while  in  Oxfordshire  ;  but  we  find  him  presently 
a  resident  of  Halifax  in  Yorkshire.  Bentley,  writing 
during  the  life-time  of  Dr.  Edward  Browne,  says  that 
his  father  "  fixed  himself  in  this  populous  and  rich 
trading  place,  wherein  to  show  his  skill  and  gain 
respect  in  the  world:  and  that  during  his  residence 
amongst  us,  and  in  his  vacant  hours,  he  writ  his 
admired  piece,"  Beligio  Medici.  Other  accounts  add 
the  information  that  the  famous  treatise  was  composed 
at  Shipden  Hall,  a  house  near  Halifax.  The  entire 
absence  of  documents  at  this  period  of  Browne's  career 
is  much  to  be  lamented,  since,  when  his  private  corre- 
spondence begins  to  be  preserved,  some  fifteen  years 
later,  we  find  him  still  keeping  up  old  friendships  in 
Halifax.  We  are,  however,  able  to  fix  with  reasonable 
exactitude  the  date  at  which  the  Beligio  Medici  was 
written.     The  preface  "To  the  Eeader,"  prefixed  to 


20  SIR  THOMAS   BROWNE  [chap. 

the  first  authorised  edition,  that  of  1643,  offers  us  some 
precious  autobiographical  information.  It  tells  us  that 
the  book  was  composed  "about  seven  years  past," 
which  would  take  us  back  to  1636.  But  in  the  first 
part  of  the  work  itself,  Browne  says,  "  as  yet  I  have 
not  seen  one  revolution  of  Saturn,  nor  hath  my  pulse 
beat  thirty  years,"  and,  in  the  second  part,  "  my  life, 
it  is  a  miracle  of  thirty  years."  The  first  of  these 
remarks  must  have  been  written  before  the  19th  of 
October  1635,  and  the  second  not  long  after  that 
date. 

The  Religio  Medici  was  not  composed  for  the  public, 
or  at  least  for  immediate  publication.  It  was  a 
"  private  exercise,"  a  personal  record  of  the  adventures 
of  a  questioning  spirit.  Browne  was  inactive  by  in- 
born disposition;  he  composed  slowly,  fitfully,  with 
alternations  of  zeal  and  languor.  To  deprecate  the 
charge  of  egotism  he  uses  an  expression  which  breathes 
the  very  temper  of  Montaigne.  Religio  Medici  is  not 
to  be  regarded  as  a  book  of  philosophical  importance  ; 
it  is  nothing,  he  declares,  but  "  a  memorial  unto  me." 
On  that  ground  he  hoped  at  first  to  avoid  discussion 
altogether;  the  book  was  to  be  a  confidential  docu- 
ment, a  sort  of  private  diary  of  the  soul.  When  we 
come  to  analyse  the  Religio  Medici,  we  shall  deal  with 
it  as  it  was  given  to  the  world  in  1643.  But  evidence 
is  not  wanting  that  Browne's  mind  had  undergone 
some  changes  in  those  eight  years.  Since  1635  his 
opinions  on  several  matters  had  become  more  con- 
servative. Many  things,  set  down  in  1635,  were 
"plausible  unto  my  passed  apprehension,  which  are 
not  agreeable  unto  my  present  self  "  in  1643. 

He  has   one  of  his  odd  terms  of  phrase,  adroitly 


I.]  EARLY  YEARS  21 

excusing  anything  -wliicli  may  seem  excessive  in  Ms 
early  boldness  of  tliouglit ;  he  begs  the  reader  to  con- 
sider his  expression  "  tropically  "  put,  that  is  to  say 
figuratively,  with  a  free  use  of  rhetorical  tropes.  We 
may  do  so,  of  course,  if  we  please,  but  if  we  wish  to 
enter  into  Browne's  mind  in  its  early  freshness,  we 
shall  not  be  wise  to  explain  away,  but  rather  to  inten- 
sify, his  brave  outlook  upon  life.  Certainly,  as  time 
went  on,  he  became  more  timid,  more  submissive  to 
authorised  judgments.  He  tells  us,  and  we  receive  the 
confession  with  regret,  that  he  gradually  conquered  his 
philosophy  on  his  knees.  For  instance,  his  difficulty 
about  miraculous  interposition  seems  to  have  lessened 
in  later  life,  or  to  have  been  more  resolutely  pushed 
behind  him;  while  it  is  a  very  curious  fact  that 
whereas,  in  the  present  text,  he  declares  that  (iri  1643) 
he  had  "  no  taint  or  tincture "  of  heresy,  schism,  or 
error,  the  manuscripts  and  the  unauthorised  texts  repre- 
sent him  (in  1635)  as  confessing  precisely  the  reverse, 
namely  that  he  is  conscious  of  such  a  taint  or  tincture. 
Browne  wrote  his  treatise  for  his  own  contentment, 
and  was  prepared  to  allow  it  to  sink  into  oblivion. 
But  the  friendliest  and  most  companionable  of  men 
could  not  compose  a  book  so  warm-hearted,  and  not 
crave  the  sympathy  of  a  reader.  It  was  shown  first  to 
one  person,  and  then  to  another  ;  at  length  permission 
was  given  to  friend  after  friend  to  copy,  always  con- 
fidentially, so  curious  and  comfortable  a  piece.  Dr. 
Johnson  was  strangely  vexed  at  the  author's  relation 
of  these  facts,  and  in  his  life  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne 
he  flies  out  in  a  passion  :  — 

"  A  long  treatise  (he  says),  however  elegant,  is  not  often 
copied  by  mere  zeal  or  curiosity,  but  may  be  worn  out  in 


22  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

passing  from  hand  to  hand,  before  it  is  multiplied  by  a  tran- 
script. It  is  easy  to  convey  an  imperfect  book,  by  a  distant 
hand,  to  the  press,  and  plead  the  circulation  of  a  false  copy 
as  an  excuse  for  publishing  the  true,  or  to  correct  what  is 
found  faulty  or  offensive,  and  charge  the  errors  on  the  tran- 
scriber's depravations.  This  is  a  stratagem,  by  which  an 
author,  panting  for  fame,  and  yet  afraid  of  seeming  to  chal- 
lenge it,  may  at  once  gratify  his  vanity,  and  preserve  the 
appearance  of  modesty." 

This  is  vigorously  put,  but  the  attribution  of  such  a 
stratagem  to  Sir  Thomas  Browne  is  justified  neither 
by  external  nor  internal  evidence.  If  Johnson  had 
been  better  acquainted  with  seventeenth-century  lit- 
erature, English  as  well  as  French,  he  would  have 
been  familiar  with  the  circumstance  that  books  much 
longer  than  Religio  Medici  were  often  spontaneously 
multiplied  in  manuscript.^  But  we  are  not  left  to  con- 
jecture, since  of  this  particular  work  at  least  five  manu- 
scripts actually  survive,  although  such  transcripts 
would  naturally  be  destroyed  as  soon  as  a  printed  text 
was  available.  There  is  no  reason  whatever  to  suppose 
that  Browne  was  "panting  for  fame."  So  far  from 
showing  any  vanity  in  this  performance,  he  speaks  in 
his  Commonplace  Book  of  Religio  Medici  as  "  a  piece  of 
mine,  published  long  ago,"  as  though  unaware,  or  at 

1  There  are  examples  in  most  literatures.  Sannazaro's  Arcadia 
was  actually  printed,  to  his  furious  indignation,  from  a  manuscript 
copy  during  his  absence  from  Italy.  Mr.  James  Fitzmaurice- 
Kelly  is  pretty  sure  that  the  first  part  of  Don  Quixote  circulated  in 
manuscript ;  for  if  not,  as  he  has  pointed  out,  how  could  Lope  de 
Vega  say  that  it  was  rubbish,  and  how  could  the  author  of  the 
Picara  Justina  refer  to  it,  before  it  was  published?  English 
students  will  recall  the  cases  of  books  far  longer  than  Religio  Medici, 
such,  for  instance,  as  Sidney's  Arcadia  and  Spenser's  Faerie 
Queene. 


I.]  EARLY  YEARS  23 

least  careless,  of  all  the  stir  and  the  admiratiou  it  had 
awakened.  One  reason  why  he  might  be  disinclined 
to  draw  particular  attention  to  it,  is  one  which  can 
with  difficulty  be  appreciated  by  a  modern  reader. 
Those  who  then  wrote  on  serious  subjects,  however 
original  or  even  subversive  their  ideas  might  be,  were 
expected  to  dignify  their  argument  by  copious  quota- 
tions from  the  Ancients  and  from  the  Fathers.  To 
appear  without  one's  Latin  was  to  stroll  in  the  street 
on  a  public  occasion  without  one's  wig.  Browne 
laments  the  lack  of  a  library ;  there  were  no  good 
books  —  that  is  to  say  books  which  enshrined  the 
heavy  learning  of  Europe  —  on  his  shelves  at  Shipden 
Hall.  So  Jeremy  Taylor,  a  year  or  two  later,  bemoaned 
his  misfortune  at  having  to  write  The  LiheHy  of  Pro- 
phesying away  from  his  library.  Neither  of  these 
great  authors  appreciated  the  immense  advantage  they 
gained  from  being  torn  from  their  traditional  support, 
and  made  to  depend  for  their  ornament  on  their  imagi- 
nation and  their  memory. 

In  1637  some  Norfolk  friends  united  in  urging 
Thomas  Browne  to  come  over  to  Norwich  to  settle 
there  as  a  practising  doctor.  Among  them  was  Mr. 
(afterwards  Sir)  Justinian  Lewin,  who  was  a  Pembroke 
man.  To  the  persuasions  of  these  friends,  Browne's 
old  tutor,  Dr.  Thomas  Lushington,  by  this  time  rector  of 
Burnham  Westgate,  in  Norfolk,  added  his  recommenda- 
tion. This  move  may  not  have  been  unconnected  with 
the  fact  that,  on  the  10th  of  July  1637,  Browne  was 
incorporated  a  doctor  of  physic  at  Oxford,  having  two 
years  earlier  taken  his  degree  at  the  London  College 
of  Physicians.  Perhaps  his  reappearance  at  Pembroke, 
and  renewed  intercourse  with  old  friends  who  lived  in 


24  SIR   THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap.  i. 

Norfolk,  led  to  the  invitation  to  JSTorwicli.  Thither, 
at  all  events,  he  now  proceeded,  and  immediately  took 
up  a  professional  practice  which  he  continued,  with 
eminent  success,  until  his  death  forty-five  years  later. 
To  close  the  scanty  record  of  this  early  portion  of 
Browne's  career,  it  should  be  said  that  in  1641  he 
married  Dorothy,  the  fourth  daughter  of  Edward 
Mileham,  of  Burlingham  St.  Peter.  The  bride  was 
twenty  years  of  age,  the  bridegroom  thirty-six.  This 
marriage  was  fortunate  to  a  high  degree.  Mrs.  Browne 
was  "a  lady  of  such  symmetrical  proportion  to  her 
worthy  husband,  both  in  the  graces  of  her  body  and 
mind,  that  they  seemed  to  come  together  by  a  kind  of 
natural  magnetism."  So  the  excellent  Whitefoot  says, 
and  he  had  opportunities  of  observing  the  couple 
through  the  whole  of  their  married  life.  A  few  of 
Dorothy  Browne's  letters  have  been  preserved ;  they 
do  greater  credit  to  her  sentiments  than  to  her  spell- 
ing ;  she  liked  her  "  sheus "  to  be  "  eythar  pinke  or 
blew,"  and  had  a  partiality  for  "whight  silk"  lined 
with  "  slit  grene  sarsanat."  She  bore  ten  children,  six 
of  whom  died  before  their  parents.  Save  for  such 
bereavements,  which  were  accepted  in  the  seventeenth 
century  with  much  resignation,  the  married  life  of 
Thomas  Browne  seems  to  have  been  one  of  unclouded 
happiness.  We  leave  him  prosperously  settled  in 
Norwich,  "  much  resorted  to  for  his  skill  in  physic." 


CHAPTER  II 

BELIGIO  MEDICI 

RELIGIO  MEDICI,  -which  to  Browne's  contemporaries 
possessed  a  dangerous  savour  of  scepticism,  has  come 
to  be  considered  by  us  as  a  work  of  practical  piety. 
The  mind  of  its  author  had  a  curious  mixture  of  direct- 
ness and  tortuousness  which  disguises  from  all  but  the 
careful  reader  the  singleness  of  his  aim.  But  those 
who  are  persistent  in  studying  the  whole  of  Religio 
Medici  —  a  book  far  too  often  treated  as  if  it 
were  a  mere  storehouse  of  striking  paradoxes  —  will 
discover  that  an  unbroken  thread  runs  through  it.  It 
lies  spread  out  before  us  like  a  smiling  champaign, 
through  which,  with  singular  turns  and  convolutions, 
undulates  a  shining  river  of  argument.  The  casual 
observer  sees  the  light  and  the  beauty,  but  there  seems 
to  him  no  current,  no  fall.  Yet,  winding  as  it  is,  the 
stream  does  move,  and  it  descends,  with  soft  regularity, 
to  a  goal  in  the  far  distance.  We  must  therefore  give 
no  excessive  attention  to  Brovnie's  fantastic  escapes 
from  the  obvious,  nor  must  we  be  deceived  by  the 
caprices  of  his  fancy.  His  argument,  if  you  give  it 
time  and  scope,  will  not  lose  its  way  nor  miss  its 
appointed  aim. 

The  object  of  Religio  Medici,  then,  when  we  lay  it 
down  after  a  careful  reading,  is  seen  to  be  a  defence 

25 


26  SIR  THOMAS   BROWNE  [chap. 

of  the  attitude  of  a  mind  that  is  scientific  and  yet 
reverent.  The  subject  of  the  treatise  is  religion  as  it 
appears,  we  may  almost  say  on  second  thoughts,  to  an 
intellect  which  for  a  long  time  past  has  been  concerned 
exclusively  with  natural  experiment,  and  which  comes 
back  to  religion  habituated  to  the  experimental  atti- 
tude. The  medicus  is  a  man,  physician  or  surgeon, 
whose  business  it  is  by  imbuing  the  human  body  with 
medicines  or  by  performing  manual  operations  on  it,  to 
cure  the  physical  ills  to  which  our  race  is  subject.  In 
order  that  he  may  learn  to  be  able  to  do  this,  he  has 
to  give  long  years  of  his  best  attention  to  material 
matters,  to  a  close  and  untiring  examination  of  the 
bodily  structure  in  health  and  in  disease,  to  drugs  and 
diet,  to  a  whole  circle  of  experiences  which  are  the 
reverse  of  spiritual.  The  mind  of  such  a  medicus, 
when  it  is  stored  with  physical  knowledge,  will  revert 
to  a  consideration  of  the  supernatural,  but  in  a  mood 
how  changed!  He  knows  that  his  faith  has  passed 
through  a  fiery  trial ;  "  my  greener  studies  have  been 
polluted,"  he  confesses,  with  heresies  and  errors.  But 
are  these  to  hold  their  power  over  his  soul  ? 

Religion,  urges  the  sceptic,  is  all  very  well  for  the 
childish,  for  the  inexperienced,  for  the  ignorant.  But 
how  does  it  affect  you,  the  instructed,  the  illuminated, 
you  who  come,  learned  far  above  your  fellows,  from 
discussion  over  the  sources  of  life  and  the  causes  of 
death  in  the  anatomical  theatre  of  Padua?  Well, 
replies  Browne,  in  his  long-drawn,  plausible  way,  that 
is  exactly  what  we  must  find  out.  We  must  see  how 
religion  stands  the  test  of  a  return  to  it  after  a  thorough 
scientific  education.  The  world,  he  finds,  has  persuaded 
itself  that  because  he  has  devoted  himself  so  long  to 


11.]  BELIGIO  MEDICI  27 

anatomy,  lie  must  have  no  religion.  In  his  smiling  can- 
dour, he  admits  that  the  world  has  some  excuse  for  its 
opinion.  If  he  is  expected  to  pull  a  long  face,  and 
blaspheme  all  cakes  and  ale ;  if  religion  necessitates 
casting  up  the  whites  of  one's  eyes  and  denouncing  all 
men  whose  opinions  differ  in  measure  from  one's  own, 
and  sitting  in  fierce  judgment  upon  one's  neighbours, 
then  Browne  has  to  retire.  He  has  to  admit  that  he 
does  not  conform  to  the  Puritan  type.  His  behaviour 
is  indifferent ;  his  discourse  speculative ;  his  profes- 
sion suspected ;  his  studies  are  physical  and  free.  If 
religion  is  incompatible  with  all  this,  he  must  wave  his 
hand  to  the  churches. 

But  he  is  determined  not  to  admit  this  incom- 
patibility ;  and  in  his  refusal  to  do  so  lies  his  great 
originality,  and  the  passionate  welcome  which  was  at 
once  accorded  on  so  many  sides  to  his  book.  In  an 
age  of  theological  fury,  Browne  argued  without  heat. 
His  was  ]3re-eminently  a  peaceable  sjjirit.  He  had  no 
pleasure  in  controversy  for  its  own  sake,  and  he  there- 
fore opens  his  discourse  with  a  series  of  statements 
which  are  intended  to  ward  off  discussion  and  to 
rout  suspicion.  The  opening  fact  of  Religio  Medici  is 
that  its  author  insists  on  being  styled  a  Christian. 
Those  who  are  not  for  us,  our  Saviour  had  said,  are 
against  us.  Browne,  in  his  subtle  way,  might  have 
contested  the  truth  of  this  position,  but  he  declines  to 
do  so.  He  accepts  it,  and  he  is  with  the  Christians, 
not  against  them.  It  is  very  distressing  to  him  that 
there  should  be  so  much  internecine  strife  among  those 
who  make  the  same  claim  as  he.  But  he  looks  ahead 
with  a  noble  foresight,  and  in  spite  of  the  discordant 
jarring  of  the  sects  conceives  "  that  revolution  of  time 


28  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

and  the  mercies  of  G-od  '^  will  effect  a  conciliatiou 
between  those  who,  to  an  eye  fixed  upon  the  miserable 
present  age,  seem  as  nnlikely  to  be  united  as  the 
poles  of  heaven. 

After  a  general  survey,  the  medicus  prefers  the 
Church  of  England.  But  he  accepts  her  rule  not 
because  he  thinks  her  infallible,  but  because,  on  the 
whole,  and  having  examined  other  systems  of  piety, 
there  is  no  church  whose  every  part  so  squares  into 
his  conscience.  He  endeavours  to  observe  her  con- 
stitutions. But  outside  the  skeleton  of  her  Articles, 
he  fills  up  the  outlines  of  his  conduct  in  harmony 
with  his  personal  convictions  :  — 

"  Whatsoever  is  beyond,  as  points  indifferent,  I  observe 
according  to  the  rules  of  my  private  reason,  or  the  humour 
and  fashion  of  my  devotion ;  neither  believing  this  because 
Luther  affirmed  it,  or  disproving  that  because  Calvin  hath 
disavouched  it.  I  condemn  not  all  things  in  the  Council  of 
Trent,  nor  approve  all  in  the  Synod  of  Dort.  In  brief,  where 
the  Scripture  is  silent,  the  Church  is  my  text;  where  that 
speaks  'tis  but  my  comment :  where  there  is  a  joint  silence 
of  both,  I  borrow  not  the  rules  of  my  religion  from  Rome 
or  Geneva,  but  the  dictates  of  my  own  reason." 

This  is  Thomas  Browne's  creed,  and  it  is  so  moderate, 
and  in  essentials  so  conservative,  that  we  may  wonder 
that  it  awakened  any  scandal.  We  shall  see,  however, 
later  on,  what  exceptions  were  made  to  it,  and  at  what 
particular  points  it  was  attacked.  But  returning  for 
the  time  being  to  the  medicus  himself,  we  presently 
detect  a  cunning  in  his  apparent  innocency.  It  would 
not  have  been  worth  while  for  him  to  compose  a  long 
treatise  merely  to  assert  that  he  is  in  accordance  with 
the  Church  of  England.     He  makes  his  confession,  as 


II.]  BELIGIO  MEDICI  29 

we  have  seen,  rather  glibly  in  order  that  under  the 
shelter  of  it  he  may  insinuate  some  more  subtle  re- 
servations. And  first  of  all  he  explains  to  us  how 
decidedly  his  individual  temperament  urges  him  to 
take  up  an  attitude  of  philosophic  doubt,  how  little  of 
the  temper  of  the  dogmatist  he  possesses :  — 

"  I  could  never  divide  myself  from  any  man  upon  the  dif- 
ference of  an  opinion,  or  be  angry  with  his  judgment  for  not 
agreeing  with  me  in  that  from  which  perhaps  within  a  few 
days  I  should  dissent  myself.  I  have  no  genius  to  disputes 
in  religion,  and  have  often  thought  it  wisdom  to  decline 
them,  especially  upon  a  disadvantage,  or  when  the  cause  of 
truth  might  suffer  in  the  weakness  of  my  patronage." 

This  leads  him  to  a  statement,  dropped  almost  as  an 
aside,  which  is  of  the  most  tremendous  importance. 
Just  as  we  are  wondering  where  the  results  of  an 
experimental  education  will  come  in,  and  in  what  this 
docile,  rather  indifferent  churchman  is  distinguished 
from  all  the  rest  of  his  pious  co-parishioners,  a  voice 
whispers,  "In  philosophy,  where  truth  seems  double- 
faced,  there  is  no  man  more  paradoxical  than  myself ; 
but  in  divinity  I  love  to  keep  the  road.''  We  have 
now  the  key  to  Browne's  argument,  which  is  that  if  a 
man  of  science  will  hold  the  truth  of  the  Christian 
religion  sincerely  in  mystical  matters,  he  may  take  as 
his  reward  the  right  to  examine  the  material  world  of 
nature  with  all  the  scepticism  which  his  experimental 
heart  desires.  Theology  and  science  in  water-tight 
compartments,  with  no  possibility  of  interchange  be- 
tween them,  —  that  is  the  ideal  of  the  physician's 
religion,  and  that  the  system  upon  which  he  can  obey 
the  Church  and  yet  be  absolute  monarch  of  his  own 
mental  processes.     What  the  Bible  declares,  although 


30  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

it  may  seem  to  be  outside  tlie  range  of  his  experience 
as  a  doctor,  tie  will  implicitly  believe,  but  lie  claims 
the  right  to  interpret  the  text  as  he  pleases  and  to 
retreat  to  his  "  solitary  and  retired  imagination."  The 
liberty  an  instructed  man  enjoys  in  the  circle  of  his 
own  private  thoughts  was  never  more  splendidly 
asserted  than  by  this  zealous  partisan  of  Church  and 
State.  On  one  hand  he  cries,  "  Certum  est,  quia  impos- 
sible estj^  on  the  other  he  seems  to  echo  the  noble 
protest  of  our  modern  poet :  — 

"  Because  man's  soul  is  man's  God  still, 
What  wind  soever  waft  his  will 

Across  the  waves  of  day  and  night, 

To  port  or  shipwreck,  left  or  right. 
By  shores  and  shoals  of  good  and  ill ; 

And  still  its  flame  at  mainmast  height 
Through  the  rent  air  that  foam-flakes  fill 

Sustains  the  indomitable  light 
Whence  only  man  hath  strength  to  steer 
Or  helm  to  handle  without  fear." 

Theology  has  laid  down  general  laws,  but  she  leaves 
to  the  soul,  in  the  exercise  of  its  sovereign  powers,  the 
intellectual  execution  of  them.  Scripture  points  the 
road,  but  it  is  the  soul,  and  the  soul  alone,  which  can 
arrange  the  details  of  pedestrian  experience.  And 
here  comes  in  the  value  of  a  scientific  education,  which 
gives  a  man  courage  and  wisdom  in  deciding  all  matters 
outside  the  formulas  of  doctrine.  "I  perceive  every 
man's  own  reason  is  his  best  (Edipus,"  says  Browne, 
"  and  will  find  a  way  to  loose  those  bonds  wherewith 
the  subtleties  of  error  have  enchained  our  more  flexible 
and  tender  judgments." 

The  position  which  the  medicus  has  now  reached  is 


II.]  BELiaiO  MEDICI  31 

SO  interesting  that  we  wish  him  to  persist  in  it.  But 
he  sees  its  danger  in  a  fanatic  age,  and  he  takes  one 
of  those  sudden  turns,  those  convolutions  of  the  stream 
of  thought,  by  which  he  loves  to  puzzle  us.  Scarcely 
has  he  asserted  the  right  of  man's  own  soul  to  be  his 
guide,  than  he  turns  to  chatting  about  heresies,  and 
seems  to  resign  all  that  he  has  gained.  He  prattles 
about  errors  which  he  used  to  hold, — that  the  soul 
might  perish  and  rise  again  with  the  body ;  that  all 
men  shall  finally  be  saved ;  that  we  may  loray  for  the 
dead.  He  declares,  almost  unctuously,  that  he  never 
revealed  these  soul-destroying  errors  to  any  of  his 
dearest  friends  (although  now  he  reveals  them  to  the 
world);  he  assures  us,  very  volubly,  that  he  has  no 
pleasure  in  propaganda,  and  no  wish  to  found  a  sect. 
We  wonder  what  he  is,  in  vulgar  phrase,  "  driving  at," 
till  it  occurs  to  us  that  whenever  Browne  is  particu- 
larly chatty,  we  shall  find  that  he  is  concealing  some- 
thing of  his  intentions.  The  argument,  sure  enough, 
takes  another  turn,  and  we  see  again  where  we  are. 

Under  cover  of  the  extravagance  of  his  assurance 
that  he  is  himself  no  heretic,  he  now  insinuates  the 
conviction,  alarming  enough  in  the  early  seventeenth 
century,  that  heresy  cannot  be  extirpated.  Under  the 
guise  of  a  reproof  of  the  habit  the  Christian  churches 
have  "  to  mince  themselves  almost  into  atoms,"  he  de- 
mands a  wide  liberty  of  intellectual  action  for  men  of 
"  singular  parts  and  humours."  Science  has  a  domain 
of  her  own,  where  the  schools  and  the  councils  have 
no  authority  to  intrude,  "  wherein  the  liberty  of  an 
honest  reason  may  play  and  expatiate  with  security, 
and  far  without  the  circle  of  an  heresy." 

The  scepticism  which  has  been  awakened  in  the 


32  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap, 

breast  of  the  physician  by  his  experience  in  dealing 
with  the  facts  of  the  material  world  does  not,  however, 
in  the  case  of  Thomas  Browne,  exasperate  him  to  a 
general  defiance  of  religious  tradition.  He  accepts 
the  latter,  and  he  looks  about  to  find  a  relief  from  the 
mental  irritability  which  arises  in  his  spirit.  He  finds 
it  in  a  contemplation  of  the  incomprehensibility  of  the 
Christian  mysteries.  Browne's  was  a  meditative  nature ; 
he  was  neither  a  mystic  nor  a  theological  metaphysi- 
cian, and  he  early  found  an  immense  satisfaction  in 
resigning  to  others  those  "  wingy  mysteries  in  divinity  " 
which  exercised  the  minds  of  his  robust  Puritan  con- 
temporaries. In  a  happy  hour  he  discovered  that  the 
visible  world  is  but  a  portrait  of  the  invisible,  and  that, 
as  his  genius  lay  towards  physic,  not  towards  meta- 
physic,  he  could  safely  leave  dogma  to  those  who 
appreciated  it,  while  he  devoted  his  own  energies  to 
deciphering  "the  public  manuscript  of  nature."  In 
other  words,  his  religious  feelings  were  sincere,  but  he 
learned  to  keep  them  rigidly  apart  from  his  scientific 
investigation.  He  considered  it  worse  than  useless 
for  a  man  of  his  temperament  to  discuss  niceties  of 
theological  dogma.  The  wise  plan  for  the  scientific 
investigator  was  to  accept  the  decisions  of  the  Church 
with  humility,  bow  the  head,  and  then  go  on  making 
physical  inquiries  without  any  further  reference  to 
religion. 

A  delicate  prudence  was  requisite  in  carrying  out 
this  scheme.  It  was  much  more  difficult  for  a 
Protestant  in  England  than  for  a  Catholic  in  France 
or  Italy  to  do  it.  Browne's  great  contemporary, 
Descartes,  had  just  the  same  horror  as  our  medicus 
for  theological  controversy,  and  he  escaped  exactly 


u.]  BELIGIO  MEDICI  33 

as  Browne  did,  on  the  "  figurative  sense  "  of  Scripture. 
He,  too,  was  careful  to  put  in  conciliatory,  ingratiating 
phrases  now  and  then  about  the  Church,  and  he 
found  strong  backers  among  the  Oratorians  and  the 
Jansenists.  He  put  the  results  of  science  and  religion 
apart,  in  separate  pigeon-holes,  excluding  each  from 
communication  with  the  other,  but  he  did  it  with 
impunity.  Even  the  Jesuits,  with  whom  alone  in  a 
Catholic  country  the  man  of  science  was  likely  to 
come  into  collision,  were  apt  to  be  indulgent  in  these 
matters.  They  seem,  as  a  rule,  to  have  tolerated 
discussion  of  physical  conditions,  so  long  as  the  author- 
ity of  the  Church  was  not  formally  impugned. 

But  the  English  Puritans  were  far  less  tolerant; 
they  looked  with  grave  suspicion  on  all  those  who 
went  prying  about  to  unravel  the  secrets  of  the 
physical  world.  And  as  the  seventeenth  century 
proceeded,  in  France  as  well  as  in  England,  the 
tendency  was  not  to  liberality  but  to  a  sterner 
formalism.  The  desire  "to  live  in  peace  and  to 
continue  the  course  of  life  he  had  begun"  was 
Descartes'  excuse  for  suppressing  the  Traite  du  Monde 
in  1633,  when  the  condemnation  of  Galileo  had  scared 
him ;  and,  meanwhile,  the  temper  of  Port-Eoyal  grew 
more  and  more  adverse  to  science,  as  it  appeared  to 
the  Jansenists  that  it  encouraged  libertinism.  We 
shall  have  to  insist  on  this  when  we  touch  on  the 
extraordinary  contrast  between  Browne  and  Pascal, 
whose  attitude  to  science  presently  led  them  into 
paths  diametrically  opposite.  Eor  the  moment  we 
need  but  remind  ourselves  that  the  state  of  social  and 
political  confusion  in  England  was  directly  beneficial 
to  Browne  in  giving   him   immunity  in  his  perilous 


84  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [char 

experiment.  In  1643,  the  zealots  had  something  else 
to  occupy  them  than  the  worrying  of  an  obscure 
physician,  who  loudly  declared  that  he  was  essentially 
in  sympathy  with  their  views,  and  who  offered  no 
objection  on  any  point  of  doctrine. 

Browne  proceeds,  under  shelter  of  his  constant 
protests  of  orthodoxy,  to  show  how  divine  wisdom 
is  aided  in  its  exercise  by  the  discoveries  of  the 
medical  profession.  An  address  in  verse  breaks  his 
arguments  here  with  an  invocation  of  the  Deity,  and 
is  worthy  of  our  attention.  Browne's  poetry  is  never 
very  skilful  in  form,  but  he  uses  it  to  hammer  out 
thoughts  which  do  not  lend  themselves  to  expression 
in  prose.  On  the  subject  of  the  mission  of  the  man 
of  science  he  says ;  — 

"  Teach  me  to  soar  aloft,  yet  ever  so, 
When  near  the  Sun,  to  stoop  again  below ; 
Thus  shall  my  humble  feathers  safely  hover, 
And,  though  near  earth,  more  than  the  heav'ns  discover ; 
And  then  at  last,  when  homeward  I  shall  drive, 
Rich  with  the  spoils  of  nature,  to  my  hive, 
There  will  I  sit  like  that  industrious  fly, 
Buzzing  Thy  pra^ises,  which  shall  never  die, 
Till  death  abrupts  me,  and  succeeding  glory 
Bids  me  go  on  in  a  more  lasting  story." 

He  prefers  the  study  of  little  things  to  that  of 
big  things.  The  microscope  suits  his  eyes  better 
than  the  vast  sweep  of  the  telescope.  He  very 
quaintly  tells  us  that  he  finds  no  pleasure  in  look- 
ing at  whales  or  elephants  or  dromedaries ;  these 
prodigious  and  majestic  pieces  of  Nature's  handiwork 
appal  him  by  their  size.  He  loves  to  watch  the 
habits  of  bees  and  ants  and  spiders,  and  considers 


"•]  BELIGIO  MEDICI  35 

that  ^^  in  these  narrow  engines  there  is  more  curious 
mathematics,  and  that  the  civility  of  these  little 
citizens  more  neatly  sets  forth  the  wisdom  of  their 
maker."     He  continues :  — 

"I  could  never  content  my  contemplation  with  those  general 
pieces  of  wonder,  the  flux  and  reflux  of  the  sea,  the  increase 
of  Nile,  the  conversion  of  the  needle  to  the  North ;  and  have 
studied  to  match  and  parallel  those  in  the  more  obvious  and 
neglected  pieces  of  Nature,  which,  without  further  travel,  I 
can  do  in  the  cosmography  of  myself.  We  carry  with  us 
the  wonders  we  seek  without  us  ;  there  is  all  Africa  and  her 
prodigies  in  us.  We  are  that  bold  and  adventurous  piece  of 
Nature  [how  Browne  loves  to  repeat  this  phrase !]  which  he 
that  studies  wisely  learns  in  a  compendium  what  others 
labour  at  in  a  divided  piece  and  endless  volume." 

Here  speaks  the  careful  naturalist,  as  we  are  pre- 
pared to  find  him  in  the  pages  of  the  Vulgar  Errors, 
well  content  with  an  intense  examination  of  a  narrow 
field ;  well  pleased,  too,  in  spite  of  the  attractions  of  a 
great  centre  like  London,  to  make  a  little  country- 
town  his  home  and  its  parish-bounds  the  limit  of  his 
ambition.  His  appeal  to  a  closer  and  more  reverent 
study  of  Nature  starts  from  this  modest  apprehension 
of  the  value  of  small  things.  He  urges  on  the  reader 
the  probability  of  his  finding  the  Divine  purpose  more 
clearly  revealed  in  the  wing  of  an  insect  than  in  the 
motions  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  not  because  the  latter 
are  less  wonderful,  but  because  they  are  more  remote 
and  more  mysterious,  less  under  the  rigid  inspection  of 
our  eyes  and  instruments.  Passionately  Browne  pleads, 
as  if  pointing  to  his  cases  of  butterflies,  his  liortus  siccus, 
his  anatomical  preparations,  and  all  the  apparatus  of 
his  study  in  Norwich,  for  a  patient  and  unbiassed 
examination  of  little  physical  things,  for  a  recognition 


36  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

of  their  individual  value,  for  an  honest  effort  not  to 
weave  fairy-tales  about  them  and  perpetuate  a  gabble 
of  superstitions,  but  to  praise  God  in  their  reality  and 
in  the  harmony  of  their  construction.  Such  words  as 
the  following  fell  upon  the  ears  of  the  seventeenth 
century  with  a  sense  of  absolute  novelty ;  they  made 
an  appeal  to  a  new  instinct,  to  mental  powers  hitherto 
una  wakened :  — 

"  I  hold  there  is  a  general  beauty  in  the  works  of  God, 
and  therefore  no  deformity  in  any  kind  or  species  of  creature 
whatsoever.  I  cannot  tell  by  what  logic  we  call  a  toad,  a 
bear,  or  an  elephant  ugly ;  they  being  created  in  those  out- 
ward shapes  and  figures  which  best  express  the  actions  of 
their  inward  forms,  and  having  past  that  general  visitation 
of  God,  who  saw  that  all  that  He  had  made  was  good,  that 
is,  conformable  to  His  will,  which  abhors  deformity,  and  is 
the  rule  of  order  and  beauty.  There  is  no  deformity  but  in 
monstrosity;  wherein,  notwithstanding,  there  is  a  kind  of 
beauty.  Nature  so  ingeniously  contriving  the  irregular  parts  as 
they  become  sometimes  more  remarkable  than  the  principal 
fabric.  To  speak  yet  more  narrowly,  there  was  never  anything 
ugly  or  misshapen  but  the  Chaos  ;  wherein,  notwithstanding, 
to  speak  strictly,  there  was  no  deformity,  because  no  form ; 
nor  was  it  yet  impregnated  by  the  voice  of  God.  N"ow  Nature 
is  not  at  variance  with  Art,  nor  Art  with  Nature,  they  being 
both  servants  of  His  Providence.  Art  is  the  perfection  of 
Nature.  Were  the  world  now  as  it  was  the  sixth  day,  there 
were  yet  a  Chaos.  Nature  hath  made  one  world  and  Art 
another.  In  brief,  all  things  are  artificial;  for  Nature  is 
the  Art  of  God." 

We  must  remind  ourselves  again  of  Browne's  phrase, 
that  every  man's  own  reason  is  his  best  CEdipus.  The 
Sphinx  which  puts  the  questions  is  Nature,  and  while 
she  supplies  problems  to  be  solved,  it  is  for  CEdipus 
to  verify  the  solutions.     We  do  not  find  our  medicus 


II.]  R^LIGIO  MEDICI  37 

troubled   about   large  views  of  scientific  pbilosopby. 
With   mucli  that  is  curiously  in  common  with  Des- 
cartes —  of    whom,   however,   he   never    once   makes 
mention  in  any  portion  of  his  writings — he  differs 
radically  from  him  in  the  breadth  of  his  vision.     Both 
of  these  remarkable  men  seem  to  have  held,  simul- 
taneously,  views   with  regard  to  the   conditions   of 
science  which  were  entirely  new,  and  which  appear  to 
us  singularly  exact   and   just.     But  while  Descartes 
pushed  his  deductive  system   beyond  the   limits   of 
prudence,   and    dared    to  revolutionise    physics   and 
mathematics,  Browne,  a  more  timid  philosopher  if  a 
more  original  and  charming  writer,  shrank  from  the 
reduction   of  the   universal   essence   of  things   to   a 
theory.     It  is  a  vain,  but  a  tempting  speculation  to 
wonder  what  kind  of  an  influence  Browne  would  have 
exercised  if  —  instead  of  living  (as  it  would  seem)  side 
by  side  with  Descartes,  yet  ignorant  of  his  existence  — 
Browne  had  been  born  a  generation  later,  and  sub- 
jected to  the  full  tide  of  Cartesian  ideas.     We  might 
have    possessed    a  more    powerful   philosopher,  but, 
almost  certainly,  a  less  fascinating  artist. 

For,  before  we  have  reached  the  middle  of  Religio 
Medici,  we  have  discovered  that  it  is  an  artist 
with  whom  we  have  to  deal,  and  not  a  philosopher. 
There  seemed  a  chance,  as  the  argument  opened,  that 
we  should  find  here  the  apology  of  a  new  mind.  But 
we  are  soon  persuaded  that  our  medicus  belongs  to 
the  class  of  those  who  are,  as  Huxley  put  it,  the 
mirrors  of  their  age,  not  to  the  class  of  those  who 
express  the  thoughts  which,  in  two  or  three  centuries, 
will  be  the  thoughts  of  everybody.  Browne  is  not, 
we  discover,  an  inaugurator  of  this  species.     He  stands, 


38  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

in  virtue  of  the  fine  and  reasonable  qualities  of  his 
intellect,  a  little  ahead  of  his  contemporaries,  but  not 
much,  and  he  never  advances  so  far  as  to  lose  sight  of 
them.  In  short,  he  is  not  so  eminent  as  a  thinker  as 
he  is  as  a  writer;  and  we  resign  ourselves  to  the 
immense  pleasure  of  hearing  the  average  ideas  of  intel- 
ligent persons  in  the  early  part  of  the  seventeenth 
century  placed  before  us  in  the  best  possible  way.  If 
we  want  something  quite  new,  something  that  was 
to  speed  the  world  violently  forward  along  its  intel- 
lectual track,  then  we  must  turn  to  Spinoza  or  Des- 
cartes, and  the  men  who  contributed  to  the  movement 
of  thought.  In  Browne  thought  is  moderately  static, 
but  it  is  rendered  in  enchanting  forms,  and  in  a  studied 
harmony  of  language. 

These  reflections  become  necessary  to  our  enjoy- 
ment of  Religio  Medici,  when  the  author  starts  on  a 
consideration  of  his  personal  attitude  in  face  of  what 
he  had  somewhat  earlier  called  "the  meanders  and 
labyrinths  of  providence.'^  He  is  eager  to  deal  with 
the  subject  of  miracles,  on  which  he  expatiates  at 
length.  He  admits  the  existence  of  the  miraculous 
with  a  lightheartedness  that  is  perhaps  a  little 
deceptive.  Is  he  so  confident  as  he  declares  himself 
to  be  ?  His  position  is  that  the  age  of  wonder  never 
passes ;  that  all  violent  acts  of  disturbance  are  equally 
easy  to  God,  if  to  perform  them  is  His  will ;  that  the 
physical  world  is  full  of  miracles ;  and  that  we  must 
beware  lest  we  narrowly  confine  the  power  of  God. 
The  result  of  these  concessions  is  that  Browne  accepts, 
and  with  an  alacrity  which  might  even  alarm  the 
clergy  whose  criticism  he  deprecates,  everything  that 
is  supernatural  in  religious  tradition  and  anecdote.     At 


II.]  BELIGIO  MEDICI  39 

the  shrine  of  the  piety  of  his  day,  he  sacrifices  all  the 
results  of  analytical  demonstration  and  rational  re- 
search. We  are  not  entirely  consoled  by  the  state- 
ment that  pious  frauds,  performed  with  bits  of  holy 
wood,  or  with  consecrated  swords  and  roses,  are  con- 
temptible, because  we  see  more  of  the  Protestant  in 
this  than  of  the  philosopher. 

We  then  reach  the  burning  question  of  witches, 
where  it  is  melancholy  to  find  that  our  physician  had 
advanced  no  whit  ahead  of  his  fierce  and  ignorant 
contemporaries.  He  does  not  question  the  existence, 
nor  the  malign  action,  of  evil  spirits.  "  I  have  ever 
believed,  and  do  now  know,  that  there  are  witches." 
Indeed,  he  loses  for  once  all  his  moderation  and  his 
amenity,  and  calls  those  who  do  not  share  his  belief 
"  atheists,"  a  word  which,  in  the  early  seventeenth 
century,  bore  a  moral  and  social,  no  less  than  a  theo- 
logical stigma.  The  expression  "  do  now  know  "  reads 
like  an  interpolation,  and  suggests  that  Browne  had, 
perhaps  since  he  came  to  Norwich,  been  personally 
engaged  in  one  of  those  hideous  witch-trials  which 
were  the  disgrace  of  the  age.  Or,  as  the  book  was 
written  in  1635,  this  may  very  likely  be  a  reference 
to  the  condemnation  of  the  unhappy  women  at  the 
Lancashire  assizes  early  in  that  year,  which  attracted 
immense  popular  interest.  We  shall  have,  in  a  later 
chapter,  to  record  the  most  melancholy  incident  of 
Browne's  career,  the  part  he  took,  in  1664,  in  the 
judicial  murder  of  Rose  Cullender  and  Amy  Duny. 
Here,  in  Religio  Medici,  he  confesses  to  an  implicit 
faith  in  prodigies,  in  prognostics,  in  short  in  a  whole 
world  of  superstition  with  regard  to  which  it  is  impos- 
sible to  say  that  he  was  in  any  sense  ahead  of  his  time. 


40  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [cha?. 

It  is  pleasant  to  turn  from  this  painful  matter  to  a 
field  of  innocent  speculation,  where  Browne's  graceful 
and  melodious  style  has  free  course.  He  declares  his 
confident  belief  in  the  neo-Platonic  theory  of  an  undi- 
vided and  common  spirit  animating  the  whole  world. 
"  Man  is  a  microcosm,  partaking  of  the  nature  of  all 
created  essences/'  in  which  in  fact  you  may  see  the  uni- 
verse reflected,  as  in  a  very  small  pool  you  can  discern 
at  night  the  vault  of  heaven  and  all  the  infinitude  of 
stars.  He  is  full  of  the  doctrines  of  Paracelsus,  a 
philosopher  who  appears  at  this  time,  and  not  at  this 
time  only,  to  have  exercised  a  commanding  influence 
over  Browne's  intelligence.  There  were  many  reasons 
why  the  career  and  opinions  of  the  Swiss  visionary 
should  fascinate  our  Norwich  doctor.  Paracelsus,  who 
had  now  been  dead  for  just  a  hundred  years,  was  a 
physician  who  took  the  widest  possible  view  of  the 
relationship  of  man  to  the  universe,  and  whose  contri- 
butions to  the  actual  practice  of  medicine  had  been 
equally  bold  and  incessant.  Sluggishness  and  timi- 
dity, indeed,  had  never  been  charged  against  Para- 
celsus, whose  ceaseless  activity  led  many  in  his  own 
time,  and  in  the  succeeding  century,  to  accuse  him  of 
being  a  fraudulent  quack.  What  Paracelsus  really 
was  —  beyond  being  an  intellectual  creature  of  the 
fieriest  energy  —  the  world  has  not  yet  decided.  To 
his  disciple,  it  is  quite  plain,  he  appeared  an  ideal  of 
what  the  experimental  scientific  physician  should  be, 
a  model  of  sanity  and  good  works,  and  a  promoter  of 
that  vague  neo-Platonism  which  was  so  dear  to  the 
nature  of  Thomas  Browne. 

In  JReligio  Medici,  however,  Browne  rejects  the  Mont- 
pellier  theory  of  vitalism,  by  virtue  of  which  the  soul 


II.]  BELIGIO  MEDICI  41 

was  held  to  be  an  organic  part  of  the  fabric  of  man,  a 
fluid  film,  perhaps  faintly  luminous,  pervading  the 
human  structure,  in  the  removal  of  which  consisted 
the  fact  of  death.  Browne  had  sought  for  evidences 
of  the  presence  of  this  visible  instrument  of  life  in  a 
series  of  careful  anatomical  operations,  and  he  had  be- 
come convinced  that  it  does  not  exist.  He  found  that 
there  is  no  organ  in  the  whole  fabric  of  man  which  it 
is  permissible  to  suppose  the  seat  of  this  essential  soul. 
He  had  come  to  the  conclusion  that,  even  in  the  brain, 
"  which  we  term  the  seat  of  reason,  there  is  not  any- 
thing of  moment  more  than  I  can  discover  in  the  crany 
of  a  beast,  and  this  is  a  sensible  and  no  inconsiderable 
argument  of  the  inorganity  of  the  soul."  Yet  on  this 
subject  we  may  be  led  to  believe  that  Browne's  mind 
was  not  absolutely  made  up,  since  in  another  place  he 
uses  the  vitalist  formula  with  approval,  and  expresses 
the  opinion  that  "  the  immortal  spirit  and  incorrupti- 
ble substance  of  my  soul "  may  sleep  awhile  "  within 
this  house  of  flesh."  He  uses  the  picturesque  but  un- 
convincing illustration  of  the  metamorphosis  of  silk- 
worms, the  moth,  like  the  soul,  having  existed  in 
embryo  in  the  body  of  the  chrysalis. 

In  common  with  so  many  of  his  more  imaginative 
contemporaries,  Browne  is  lifted  to  a  strange  exaltation 
by  the  consideration  of  mortality.  He  has  observed  in 
other  medical  men  that  the  habit  of  cutting  up  dead 
bodies,  or,  as  he  puts  it,  the  "  continual  raking  into  the 
bowels  of  the  deceased,"  has  led  to  an  insensibility  in 
the  presence  of  death.  The  imagination  becomes  easily 
quenched  by  familiarity.  He  tells  us  that  he  is  glad 
to  say  that  no  such  callousness  has  ever  affected  him- 
self. The  daily  habit  of  a  doctor's  life  has  not  stupefied 


42  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

his  sensibility  in  these  matters,  nor  the  "  continual 
sight  of  anatomies,  skeletons,  or  cadaverous  relics,  like 
vespilloes  or  grave-makers,"  made  him  stupid.  Oddly 
enough,  he  attributes  something  of  his  freshness  of 
mind  in  face  of  the  mysteries  of  mortality  to  his  study 
of  the  Philosopher's  Stone,  which,  he  declares,  "  hath 
taught  me  a  great  deal  of  divinity."  We  find  our- 
selves wandering,  under  the  charge  of  this  urbane  and 
learned  guide,  through  a  strange  twilight  of  mingled 
intelligence  and  credulity. 

On  the  subject  of  the  resurrection  of  the  body, 
which  very  naturally  rises  out  of  the  consideration  of 
its  tendency  to  decay,  Browne  makes  a  kind  of  con- 
fession which  is  in  his  best  manner.  We  must  quote 
but  a  fragment  of  its  long-drawn  music :  — 

"  I  believe  that  our  estranged  and  divided  ashes  shall  unite 
again ;  that  our  separated  dust,  after  so  many  pilgrimages 
and  transformations  into  the  parts  of  minerals,  plants,  animals, 
elements,  shall  at  the  Voice  of  God  return  into  their  primitive 
shapes,  and  join  again  to  make  up  their  primary  and  pre- 
destinate forms.  As  at  the  Creation  there  was  a  separation 
of  that  confused  mass  into  its  species,  so  at  the  destruction 
thereof  there  shall  be  a  separation  into  its  distinct  individuals. 
.  .  .  Let  us  speak  naturally  and  like  philosophers.  The 
forms  of  alterable  bodies  in  these  sensible  corruptions  perish 
not;  nor,  as  we  imagine,  wholly  quit  their  mansions,  but 
retire  and  contract  themselves  into  their  secret  and  unacces- 
sible  parts,  where  they  may  best  protect  themselves  from  the 
action  of  their  antagonist.  A  plant  or  vegetable  consumed 
to  ashes  to  a  contemplative  and  school-philosopher  seems 
utterly  destroyed,  and  the  form  to  have  taken  his  leave  for 
ever.  But  to  a  sensible  artist  the  forms  are  not  perished, 
but  withdrawn  into  their  incombustible  part,  where  they  lie 
secure  from  the  action  of  that  devouring  element.  This  is 
made  good  by  experience,  which  can  from  the  ashes  of  a  plant 


II.]  BELIGIO  MEDICI  43 

revive  the  plant,  and  from  its  cinders  recall  it  unto  its  stalk 
and  leaves  again.  What  the  art  of  man  can  do  in  these  in- 
ferior pieces,  what  blasphemy  is  it  to  affirm  the  finger  of  God 
cannot  do  in  these  more  perfect  and  sensible  structures? 
This  is  that  mystical  philosophy,  from  whence  no  true 
scholar  becomes  an  atheist,  but  from  the  visible  effects  of 
nature  grows  up  a  real  divine,  and  beholds  not  in  a  dream, 
as  Ezekiel,  but  in  an  ocular  and  visible  object,  the  types  of 
his  resurrection." 

This  notion  of  the  revival  in  life  and  beauty  of  a 
flower  which  had  been  reduced  to  ashes  frequently 
recurs  in  the  circle  of  Browne's  friends.  In  1648, 
Dr.  Henry  Power  repeatedly  entreated  Browne  to 
carry  out  the  experiment  and  perform  "  the  reindivid- 
ualling  of  an  incinerated  plant,"  importuning  the  phy- 
sician so  repeatedly  that  Power  had  to  apologise  at 
last  for  his  insistence.  It  was  felt  that  such  an  act 
of  re-creation,  reversing  the  natural  order  of  decay, 
would  throw  a  wonderful  light  upon  the  mystery  of 
the  resurrection.  Various  Continental  chemists  had 
vaguely  described  it  as  possible,  but  it  was  felt  by  Ms 
English  friends  that  Browne,  and  Browne  alone,  was 
fitted  to  unravel  so  noble  and  admirable  a  secret.  But 
Browne  seems  to  have  been  coy  in  undertaking  the 
experiment,  and  to  have  held  the  enthusiasm  of  his 
disciples  in  restraint.  This  was  a  typical  instance  of 
the  way  in  Avhich  his  imaginative  instinct  and  his 
rapid  flights  of  rhetoric  carried  him  into  an  atmosphere 
which  his  excellent  common  sense  declined  to  breathe. 

In  the  desultory  course  of  Religio  Medici,  our  physi- 
cian now  gives  us  his  ideas  about  hell  and  eternal 
punishment.  He  is  full  of  *  surprises,  and  on  this 
subject,  which  we  should  have  expected  him  to  touch 


44  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

rather  timidly,  lie  is  instinct  with  courage  and  fine 
feeling.  "I  thank  God,"  he  cries,  "and  with  joy  I 
mention  it,  I  was  never  afraid  of  Hell,  nor  never  grew 
pale  at  the  description  of  that  place."  We  have  not 
begun  to  know  Thomas  Browne  if  we  have  not  yet  dis- 
covered him  to  be  an  optimist,  one  for  whom  Providence 
had  painted  the  whole  wide  world  in  rose-colour.  To 
such  a  temperament  as  his,  hell  could  offer  no  terrors, 
because  it  could  never  concentrate  his  attention.  He 
was  delighted  with  life,  with  all  its  gentle  pleasures 
and  multiform  excitements,  and  it  was  not  possible  for 
him  to  see  anything  at  the  end  of  life,  far  away  and 
closing  the  vista,  except  a  vision  of  a  heaven  which 
should  be  like  life,  only  still  more  brilliantly  illumin- 
ated. Into  such  a  conception  of  existence  as  the  sunny, 
optimist  character  of  Browne  had  instinctively  formed 
there  was  no  place  for  the  idea  of  hell ;  "  that  terrible 
term  has  never  detained  me  from  sin,  nor  do  I  owe 
any  good  action  to  the  name  thereof."  He  fancies  that 
others  must  be  like  him ;  he  cannot  believe  that  any 
one  can  be  "  scared  "  into  a  virtuous  disposition ;  and 
in  the  awful  justice  of  God,  upon  which  the  sour 
theology  of  the  age  loved  to  dilate  in  horror,  Browne 
can  see  nothing  but  "  an  abyss  and  mass  of  mercies." 

In  his  own  existence  of  thirty  years  he  tells  us  that 
everything  has  turned  out  for  his  happiness  and  profit. 
Even  what  others  consider  "  crosses,  af9.ictions,  judg- 
ments, misfortunes,"  when  they  have  come  his  way, 
have  presently  shown  themselves  to  be  blessings  in 
disguise.  No  wonder  that  Browne  was  prepared  to 
believe  in  good  fortune  and  a  lucky  star,  for  he  seems 
to  have  been  one  of  those  few  men  who  have  passed 
through  life  in  an  unbroken  state  of  felicity.     But  in 


II.]  BELiaiO  MEDICI  45 

thus  expressing  his  adoring  debt  of  gratitude  to  God, 
Browne  unconsciously  reveals  once  more  his  tempera- 
ment. There  are,  no  doubt,  persons  who  are  "  lucky '' 
and  others  who  are  unlucky.  But  more  than  half  the 
secret  of  happiness  lies  locked  up  in  our  own  bosoms, 
and  fate  has  to  strike  heavily  indeed  before  it  breaks 
down  the  cheerfulness  of  a  spirit  that  is  instinctively 
cheerful.  In  this  Browne  is  almost  alone  among  phi- 
losophers, who  are  not,  on  the  whole,  a  happy  band. 
Even  Montaigne  has  his  dejected  moods,  and  declares 
that  "  le  n'avoir  point  de  mal,  c'est  le  plus  avoir  de  bien 
que  I'homme  puisse  esperer.''  Browne  would  not  have 
been  content  with  that ;  he  would  have  lifted  his  hands 
with  a  smile  and  an  0  altitudo  I  and  would  have  de- 
clared that  to  live  at  all  was  to  have  secured  a  wealth 
beyond  rubies. 

He  speaks  of  "  the  humour  of  my  irregular  self,"  and 
in  truth  we  learn  to  deliver  ourselves  up  to  it.  We 
hardly  know  how  to  take  him,  when,  close  upon  his 
cheerful  disquisitions  upon  hell,  we  find  him  discoursing 
upon  the  pity  of  sectarianism.  Browne  is  all  for  making 
the  distinctions  between  Christians  disappear.  A  few 
differences  of  opinion  ought  not  to  be  allowed  to  break 
up  the  Church  of  God.  The  phrase  "  little  flock,"  as 
used  for  those  who  are  in  the  right  way  of  faith,  doth 
not  comfort  but  deject  his  devotion.  There  was  no 
Calvinistic  separatism  about  Browne ;  with  the  German 
poet  of  a  later  age,  he  cried,  "  Seid  umschlungen, 
Millionen,"  and  in  fancy  cast  his  arms  around  a  vast 
and  homogeneous  Church  of  all  the  world.  He  took  a 
lenient  view  of  others'  faults  of  doctrine,  being,  it  is 
perhaps  not  uncharitable  to  say,  somewhat  vague  and 
ductile  in  his  own  convictions.     He  wished  to  believe 


46  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

wliat  the  majority  of  Cliristians  believed;  nay,  lie 
insisted  upon  doing  so.  But  the  details  of  dogma  did 
not  interest  him,  and  he  dealt  in  generalities  because 
his  mind  was  not  equipped  for  theological  disputation. 
If  Browne  was  a  heretic,  as  some  declared,  there 
certainly  never  lived  a  heretic  more  anxious  to  be 
orthodox  or  less  partial  to  his  own  errors. 

But  it  is  with  a  definition  of  faith,  and  with  a  visible 
determination  to  be  subdued  to  it,  that  the  main 
argument  of  Religio  Medici  closes.  When  we  come  to 
think  what  it  is  that  the  whole  treatise  has  amounted 
to,  we  perceive  that  it  has  been  both  evasive  and  para- 
doxical. Evasive,  because  the  real  object  of  the  author 
—  apart  from  his  very  manifest  artistic  object,  to  write 
a  beautiful  book  —  has  been  to  present  an  apology  for 
carrying  on  a  secular  calling.  That  is  what  Browne, 
a  doctor  in  general  country  practice,  has  wanted  to  do, 
but  he  has  chosen  to  do  it  evasively,  by  discussing  a 
great  number  of  semi-theological  points,  many  of  which, 
it  is  obvious,  really  interest  him  very  little.  And 
paradoxically,  because  the  whole  treatise,  in  its  golden 
haziness,  like  a  meadow  flooded  with  slanting  light  at 
sunset,  gives  us  an  idea  that  the  author  really  loved 
paradox  for  its  own  sake,  and  that  his  extraordinary 
leaps  and  somersaults  are  made  out  of  solemn  freakish- 
ness,  to  amuse  his  own  gay  and  gentle  nature,  and  to 
dazzle  the  ingenuous  reader  a  little.  We  must  never 
forget  that  Religio  Medici  was  written  "  for  my  private 
exercise  and  satisfaction."  It  had  no  purpose  of 
education  or  edification ;  it  was  a  sort  of  diary  of  the 
author's  soul,  a  note-book  into  which  he  jotted  his 
spiritual  symptoms. 

Somebody  seems  to  have  reminded  him  that  he  had 


II.]  BELIGIO  MEDICI  47 

dealt  exclusively  with  faith,  and  that  he  ought  to  say 
something  about  charity.  Accordingly,  he  added  a 
sort  of  appendix,  the  second  part  of  Religio  Medici,  in 
which  he  jots  down  a  number  of  reflections  which  had 
escaped  his  memory  or  had  occurred  to  him  later. 
The  beauty  of  his  singular  style  is  nowhere  in  his 
writings  more  apparent  than  here.  He  is  eloquent,  of 
course,  about  charity,  a  quality  which  came  to  him 
easily,  for,  as  he  tells  us,  he  had  borrowed  a  merciful 
disposition  and  a  humane  inclination  from  his  parents, 
of  whom  we  can  but  regret  that  he  has  told  us  so  little. 
He  finds  in  himself  a  tendency  to  like  every  individual 
person  he  meets.  If  he  hates  anything  it  is  that  enemy 
of  reason  and  virtue,  the  Multitude,  a  mass  of  beings, 
each  one  of  whom  means  well,  but  who  collect  into  one 
body  of  stupidity  and  error.  This  gives  Browne  a 
welcome  occasion  for  a  defence  of  the  dignity  of  indi- 
vidual man,  from  which  he  returns  to  assure  us  of  his 
own  benevolence.  We  had  no  doubt  of  it,  but  we 
cannot  help  beginning  to  perceive  that  his  charity  is 
founded  not  so  much  on  reason  as  on  hope  and  in- 
clination and  on  an  easy-going  temper. 

The  close  of  the  second  part  of  Religio  Medici  is  pure 
autobiography,  and  Browne  gossips  in  it  as  no  man 
except  Montaigne  had  ever  gossiped  before.  He  is,  in 
English,  the  earliest  prose-writer  who  dwells  with  a 
delicate  complacency  upon  his  own  natural  instincts 
and  the  distinguishing  features  of  his  temperament. 
When  an  author  of  Browne's  exquisite  skill  takes  us 
into  his  confidence,  and  tells  us  the  little  secrets  of  his 
soul,  it  would  be  worse  than  useless  to  paraphrase 
what  he  says ;  we  are  forced  to  quote  his  very  words. 
When  he  talks   in   such  harmonies  as   those  which 


48  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

follow,  our  island  seems  full  of  sweet  airs.  He  tells  us 
that  lie  is  naturally  amorous  of  all  that  is  beautiful :  — 

"  I  can  look  a  whol^  day  with  delight  upon  a  handsome 
picture,  though  it  be  but  of  an  horse.  It  is  my  temper,  and 
I  like  it  the  better,  to  affect  all  harmony ;  and  sure  there  is 
music  even  in  the  beauty,  and  the  silent  note  which  Cupid 
strikes,  far  sweeter  than  the  sound  of  an  instrument.  For 
there  is  a  music  wherever  there  is  a  harmony,  order,  or  pro- 
portion ;  and  thus  far  we  may  maintain  the  music  of  the 
spheres ;  for  those  well-ordered  motions,  and  regular  paces, 
though  they  give  no  sound  unto  the  ear,  yet  to  the  under- 
standing they  strike  a  note  most  full  of  harmony.  Whosoever 
is  harmonically  composed  delights  in  harmony ;  which  makes 
me  much  distrust  the  symmetry  of  those  heads  which  declaim 
against  all  church  music.  For  myself,  not  only  from  my 
obedience,  but  my  particular  genius,  I  do  embrace  it :  for  even 
that  vulgar  and  tavern-music,  which  makes  one  man  merry, 
another  mad,  strikes  in  me  a  deep  fit  of  devotion  and  a  pro- 
found contemplation  of  the  First  Composer.  There  is  some- 
thing in  it  of  divinity  more  than  the  ear  discovers.  It  is  an 
hieroglyphical  and  shadowed  lesson  of  the  whole  world,  and 
creatures  of  God.  Such  a  melody  to  the  ear,  as  the  whole 
world,  well  understood,  would  afford  the  understanding.  In 
brief,  it  is  a  sensible  fit  of  that  harmony  which  intellectually 
sounds  in  the  ears  of  God." 

Had  not  Dryden  been  reading  this  admirable  passage 
when  he  began  his  Song  for  St.  Cecilia^ s  Day  ? 

"  From  harmony,  from  heavenly  harmony, 
This  universal  frame  began  "  ; 

and  the  whole  ode  seems  to  be  but  an  expansion  of 
Browne's  Platonic  fancy.  Here,  as  in  so  many  cases, 
the  style  of  our  physician  is  melted  into  the  pure 
frenzy  of  beauty,  which  gives  it  its  form  and  texture, 
as  though  in  defiance  of  the  author's  grave  intention. 


II.]  BELIGIO  MEDICI  49 

Like  some  Italian  of  the  Eenaissance,  born  two  hun- 
dred years  earlier,  Browne  seems  intoxicated  with  the 
new-born  sense  of  loveliness,  and  his  style  totters  with 
ecstasy.  We  see  his  writing,  too,  in  such  passages  of 
Religio  Medici  as  this,  in  the  comparative  freshness 
of  its  early  felicity,  before  the  Latinisms  had  over- 
whelmed him.  Here  we  have  nothing  to  excuse, 
nothing  to  smile  at  or  regret;  all  is  sensuous  and 
simple. 

A  great  part  of  the  charm  which  successive  genera- 
tions of  readers  have  found  in  Religio  Medici  resides 
in  the  confidence  with  which  the  writer  speaks  of 
himself,  especially  towards  the  close  of  the  Second 
Part.  The  man's  human  sympathy,  and  his  delicate 
comprehension  of  the  limits  of  those  distinctions  which 
should  make  us  the  more  interested  in  one  another, 
and,  as  a  fact,  are  so  apt  to  lead  to  suspicion  and 
dissension  —  these  are  the  qualities,  rare  at  all  times 
and  almost  unique  in  the  seventeenth  century,  which 
make  this  book  stand  alone  among  its  fellows.  Just 
as  a  bright  and  genial  companion,  talking  sympa- 
thetically about  himself,  has  the  power  to  persuade 
his  listener  that  their  instincts  and  aspirations  are 
identical,  so  all  manner  of  different  persons  have  seen 
their  own  characters  reflected  in  Thomas  Browne's 
flattering  mirror.  It  is  difficult,  for  instance,  to  think 
of  a  man  of  reflective  temper  less  like  Browne  than 
S.  T.  Coleridge  was,  yet  Coleridge  seems  to  have  told 
Wordsworth  that  he  had  never  read  a  book  in  which 
he  found  evidence  of  so  close  a  similarity  to  his  own 
make  of  mind  as  he  found  in  Religio  Medici.  Every 
one  recognises,  or  believes  that  he  recognises,  the  best 
parts  of  his  moral  and  intellectual  nature  in  Browne's 


50  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

affectionate  confidences,  and  the  amenity  of  tlie  writer 
is  so  extreme  that  the  reader  easily  overlooks  the  fact 
that  there  may  be  points  of  unlikeness  which  are  no 
less  important  in  the  general  sum  of  character. 

It  is  proper  that  we  should  now  turn  to  the  history 
of  this  remarkable  book,  which  offers  some  episodes 
of  unique  interest.  We  have  seen  that  the  treatise 
was  written  in  1635  or  1636,  in  company  with  "  some 
others  of  affinity  thereto,"  at  leisurable  hours,  and  for 
the  author's  private  exercise  and  satisfaction.  Browne 
says  plainly  that  his  object  was  not  publication,  a  fact 
which  he  considers  is  made  obvious  by  the  familiar  and 
personal  character  of  many  of  the  expressions.  It 
"  was  penned  in  such  a  place,''  namely,  Shipden  Hall, 
at  Halifax,  where  from  the  first  setting  of  pen  unto 
paper,  Browne  "had  not  the  assistance  of  any  good 
book  whereby  to  promote  my  invention  or  relieve  my 
memory."  He  considered,  therefore,  or  modestly  af- 
fected to  consider,  that  it  was  not  a  treatise  which 
could  endure  the  criticism  of  the  learned,  who  were 
inclined  in  those  days  to  investigate  small  points  of 
deficient  erudition  while  leaving  the  whole  course  of 
the  argument  unexamined.  The  upshot  of  the  affair 
was  that  Browne  was  pleased  with  the  result  of  his 
lucubrations,  and  could  not  help  showing  it  to  his 
friends,  who  asked  to  be  allowed  to  transcribe  so 
original  and  so  beautiful  a  little  book. 

In  1642  one  of  these  manuscript  transcripts  fell  into 
the  hands  of  a  London  publisher,  Andrew  Crooke,  who, 
without  obtaining  the  author's  permission,  brought  it 
out  in  the  form  of  a  small  octavo.  This,  the  first 
edition  of  Beligio  Medici,  is  a  very  curious  little  volume. 
It  has  no  title-page,  but  there  is  an  engraved  frontis- 


II.]  BELIOIO  MEDICI  51 

piece,  designed  and  cut  by  William  Marshall,  the  lead- 
ing book-illustrator  of  that  day.  This  fantastic  plate, 
which  has  become  familiar  to  the  readers  of  Browne, 
represents  a  man  who  has  leaped,  or  been  hurled, 
from  a  rock,  but  who  is  caught  in  mid-air  before  he 
reaches  the  sea  beneath  him,  by  a  hand  from  the  sky. 
Help  comes  to  him  from  heaven :  a  ccelo  salus.  There 
is  another  edition  of  the  text,  published  in  the  same 
way  and  in  the  same  year,  but  with  closer  type,  which 
is  no  less  curious  and  rare.  These  pirated  editions  are 
entirely  anonymous,  and  possess  no  prefatory  matter 
of  any  kind.  It  is  the  bare  text  of  Beligio  Medici, 
put  forth  without  revision.  Browne  calls  these  early 
editions  "  broken  and  imperfect "  copies,  founded  upon 
a  text,  which  by  frequent  transcription  had  "  still  run 
forward  in  corruption  "  ;  and  he  accuses  them  of  "  the 
addition  of  some  things,  omission  of  others,  and  trans- 
position of  many."  He  speaks  of  them  as  so  "  dis- 
guised" that  the  author  would  be  justified  if  he 
refused  to  acknowledge  them  as  his. 

In  all  this,  Browne  speaks  with  the  exaggeration  of 
an  author  who  has  been  taken  at  a  disadvantage  by  a 
crafty  publisher.  As  he  turned  the  pages  of  the  piracy 
he  would  observe  little  misprints  and  tiresome  diver- 
gences from  what  he  had  written,  which  would  be 
enough  to  disturb  his  equanimity  and  yet  are  not 
enough  to  deserve  the  language  which  he  uses  about 
them.  The  late  Dr.  Greenhill  collated  the  piracies 
with  the  text  issued  by  Browne  himself  in  1643,  and 
he  found  the  errors  to  be  singularly  few  and  of  no 
great  importance.  In  any  case,  the  editions  of  1642 
attracted  many  readers  and  were  more  and  more  widely 
discussed.     The  book  might,  however,  have  been  slow 


52  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

in  attracting  general  attention,  if  it  had  not  been  for  a 
happy  accident.  A  copy  of  it  fell  into  the  hands  of 
Edward  Sackville,  Earl  of  Dorset,  who  was  acting  as 
commissioner  of  the  king's  treasury  at  Oxford.  This 
accomplished  nobleman,  whose  virtues  are  celebrated 
by  Clarendon,  and  of  whose  "  beautiful  and  graceful 
and  vigorous  person  "  Vandyke  has  transmitted  to  us 
a  charming  portrait,  was  so  much  delighted  with 
Beligio  Medici  that  he  warmly  recommended  it  to  his 
friends,  and  particularly  to  Sir  Kenelm  Digby,  in  a 
letter  written  on  the  19th  of  December  1642. 

One  of  the  most  ardent  and  versatile  figures  of  that 
romantic  age.  Sir  Kenelm  Digby,  like  Thomas  Browne, 
had  enjoyed  the  advantages  of  a  Continental  education. 
He  also  had  devoted  himself  to  scientific  investigation, 
although  in  a  more  amateurish  spirit  than  Browne, 
and  with  much  less  of  the  true  modesty  of  experiment. 
He  had  early  become  famous  in  connection  with  a  kind 
of  anodyne  which  he  called  the  Sympathetic  Powder ; 
and  he  said  that  a  religious  Carmelite  had  entrusted 
this  remedy  to  him  as  a  secret  he  had  learned  in  Persia. 
It  is  said  that  Bacon  interested  himself  in  this  powder, 
the  rumour  of  whose  properties  led  to  Digby 's  being 
patronised  and  knighted  at  the  age  of  twenty,  by  King 
James  i.  Digby  fitted  out  a  small  fleet  in  the  Medi- 
terranean, after  the  king's  death,  and  harried  the 
Algerines  and  the  Venetians.  Having  been  a  member 
of  the  Church  of  England  since  his  childhood,  in  1636 
he  was  reconverted  to  Rome  during  a  visit  to  Paris.  He 
then  became  a  pamphleteer  on  the  subject  of  the  choice 
of  a  religion;  and  altogether,  in  his  philosophy  and  his 
adventurous  imagination,  and  his  plea  for  liberty  of 
religious  opinion,  he  was  not  merely  an  exhilarating 


II.]  BELIGIO  MEDICI  63 

contemporary  figure,  but  he  had  more  than  a  little  in 
common  with  Browne  himself. 

Though  his  ideas  were  neither  exact  nor  profound, 
there  was  that  about  the  stirring  character  of  Sir 
Kenelm  Digby  which  made  him  accepted  by  his  con- 
temporaries as  an  authority  both  in  science  and  in 
religion.  If  a  book  of  the  class  of  Religio  Medici  was 
published,  there  were  a  great  many  people  who  would 
be  interested  in  knowing  what  Sir  Kenelm  Digby 
thought  of  it.  Since  1639,  when  the  House  of  Com- 
mons had  ordered  him  to  give  an  account  of  the 
Catholic  contribution,  he  had  been  looked  upon  as  a 
leader  of  the  more  liberal  section  of  his  community, 
while  he  was  an  ardent  and  outspoken  Royalist.  Stay- 
ing in  London  when  the  Civil  War  broke  out,  Digby 
was  arrested  by  the  Parliament  and  confined  in  Win- 
chester House.  This  imprisonment,  however,  was  a 
very  mild  one ;  the  Catholic  philosopher  had  his  own 
servants,  free  communication  with  the  world  outside, 
and  great  respect  from  his  captors.  But  his  native  rest- 
lessness displayed  itself  in  a  feverish  mental  activity, 
and  Sir  Kenelm  Digby  was  now  prepared  to  write  a 
striking  pamphlet  upon  almost  any  subject. 

Although  it  was  already  late  in  the  evening  when 
Sir  Kenelm  Digby  received  Lord  Dorset's  letter 
advising  him  to  read  Religio  Medici,  he  was  so  much 
struck  by  what  his  noble  friend  had  written  that  he 
sent  his  servant  out  immediately  to  St.  Paul's  Church- 
yard to  endeavour  to  buy  a  copy.  The  shops  were 
shutting,  no  doubt,  and  the  messenger  delayed  his 
return ;  Sir  Kenelm  Digby  meanwhile  went  to  bed. 
He  was  not  yet  asleep,  however,  when  his  man  came 
back,  having  succeeded  in  buying  one  of  the  pirated 


54  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

editions.    Sir  Kenelm,  writing  next  morning  (Decem- 
ber 23,  1642)  to  Lord  Dorset,  excitedly  reports  :  — 

"  This  good-natured  creature  [Religio  Medici']  I  could 
easily  persuade  to  be  my  bedfellow,  and  to  wake  with  me  as 
long  as  I  had  any  edge  to  entertain  myself  with  the  delights 
I  sucked  from  so  noble  a  conversation.  And  truly,  my  Lord, 
I  closed  not  my  eyes  till  I  had  enriched  myself  with,  or  at 
least  exactly  surveyed,  all  the  treasures  that  are  lapped  up  in 
the  folds  of  those  few  sheets." 

But  wben  he  had  sunk  to  sleep  at  last,  having  taken, 
as  Browne  might  himself  have  said,  this  merciful 
dormitive  to  bedward,  intellectual  excitement  would 
not  suffer  Sir  Kenelm  Digby  to  rest  quiet.  In  the 
early  morning,  almost  before  it  was  light,  he  woke, 
and  then  and  there  —  as  it  appears,  in  his  bed  —  he 
began  to  compose  a  criticism  on  the  marvellous  book 
which  had  so  greatly  amazed  his  spirits.  This  critical 
examination  of  Religio  Medici,  which  formed,  when 
printed,  a  little  volume  of  one  hundred  and  twenty-four 
pages,  was  written  almost  at  a  sitting,  in  a  blaze  of 
enthusiasm  and  excitement. 

It  does  not  appear  that  either  Dorset  or  Digby  at 
this  time  knew  the  name  of  the  author  whose  book 
had  interested  them  so  much.  But  a  little  later  on, 
Sir  Kenelm  seems  to  have  put  himself  in  communica- 
tion with  Andrew  Crooke,the  publisher,  who  informed 
Browne  that  the  famous  Catholic  philosopher  was  pre- 
paring to  print  a  review  of  Religio  Medici.  It  is  almost 
certain  that  it  was  this  information  which  induced 
Browne  to  remove  the  embargo  he  had  placed  upon 
his  work,  and  to  supply  Crooke  with  a  revised  and 
correct  manuscript  to  print  from.  Meanwhile,  the 
knight  had  received  back  his  letter  from  Lord  Dorset, 


II.]  BELIGIO  MEDICI  55 

and  had  allowed  it  to  be  sent  to  the  press.  In  a  panic 
of  vexation,  on  the  3rd  of  March  1643,  Browne  wrote 
from  Norwich  to  Sir  Kenelm  Digby,  entreating  him 
to  delay  the  publication  of  that  criticism  of  which  he 
had  "  descended  to  be  the  author,"  until  the  genuine 
text  of  the  original,  which  Browne  said  he  was  now 
hastening  through  the  printer's  hands,  could  be  re- 
ferred to.  The  demand  was  a  reasonable  one,  presented 
in  the  most  courteous  terms,  but  it  reached  Winchester 
House  too  late,  or  else  Digby's  vanity  would  not  brook 
delay,  for  there  appeared  at  the  end  of  March  1643 
a  volume  of  Observations  upon  Religio  Medici,  "  occasion- 
ally written  "  by  Sir  Kenelm  Digby,  Knight.  After 
the  briefest  possible  further  delay,  Crooke  issued  "  a 
true  and  full  copy  of  that  which  was  most  imperfectly 
and  surreptitiously  printed  before  under  the  name  of 
Beligio  MediciJ'  We  see  that,  once  having  secured  the 
correct  text  of  this  popular  book,  the  publisher  was 
ready  to  acknowledge,  without  a  blush,  that  his  pre- 
vious editions  of  it  had  been  "  imperfect ''  and  even 
"  surreptitious."  The  public,  however,  had  at  last 
what  is  known  as  the  first  authorised  edition,  that 
of  1643. 

The  incidents  which  have  just  been  recorded  are  not 
merely  curious  and  interesting  in  themselves,  but  they 
mark  a  condition  in  which  Browne  was  almost,  if  not 
quite,  unique  among  the  English  authors  of  his  time. 
The  absence  of  accepted  critical  authority,  applied  to 
literature,  was  an  extreme  inconvenience  to  the  writers 
of  the  early  seventeenth  century.  A  critical  feeling 
was  abroad,  but  it  had  not  yet  found  any  vehicle,  nor 
was  it  concentrated  on  particular  publications ;  there 
was  no  one  until  the  time  of  Dryden,  who  was  in  a 


56  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

position  to  create  critical  values.  The  result  was  that 
books  fell  suddenly  into  complete  discredit  in  conse- 
quence of  a  slight  change  in  the  current  of  popular 
taste,  and  did  not  recover  until  modern  criticism  went 
back  to  dig  for  them  under  the  dust  of  two  centuries. 
If  we  consider  certain  admirable  publications  of  the 
same  decade  as  Religio  Medici,  if  we  take,  for  in- 
stance, Milton's  Poems  of  1645,  and  Herrick's  Hesperides 
of  1648,  we  find  ourselves  in  the  presence  of  works 
which  acquired  no  public  valuation  in  their  own  time, 
which  attracted  no  examination  and  no  movement  of 
opinion,  and  which,  in  consequence,  sank  immediately 
into  discredit  as  soon  as  the  taste  of  the  moment 
deviated  from  that  in  which  they  had  been  composed. 
It  may  be  said,  without  paradox,  that  the  reputation 
of  Herrick  and  Milton  as  lyrical  poets  did  not  begin 
to  exist  until  modern  criticism  rediscovered  them,  and 
almost,  indeed,  created  them. 

It  was  Browne's  extraordinary  good  fortune  to  enjoy 
contemporary  criticism.  He  was  defended  and  he  was 
attacked,  but  at  least  he  did  not  sink  under  that  fatal 
silence  which  attended  the  bulk  of  the  works  of  his 
contemporaries.  The  Observations  of  Sir  Kenelm  Digby 
gave  a  definite  value  to  Beligio  Medici.  People  who 
read  the  latter  were  pleased  to  know  what -were  the 
conclusions  of  the  Eoman  Catholic  critic,  and  they 
adopted  or  rejected  them  as  the  case  might  be.  Dis- 
cussion was  awakened,  and  it  moved  on  a  definite 
basis.  The  success  of  Browne's  book  was  marked,  and 
public  curiosity  was  proved  by  the  issue,  so  early  as 
1644,  of  a  revised  edition  of  Digby's  Observations.  Other 
censors  hurried  forward,  who  agreed  neither  with 
Digby  nor  with  Browne.     Their  pamphlets,  whether 


II.]  BELIGIO  MEDICI  57 

hostile  or  laudatory,  increased  the  excitement  around 
the  original  text,  and  the  Norwich  physician  found 
himself  one  of  the  most  eminent  writers  of  the  day. 
Curiosity  in  his  book  spread  quickly  to  the  continent 
of  Europe ;  and  already  in  1644  two  editions  were  pub- 
lished in  Latin,  one  in  Leyden  and  the  other  in  Paris. 

The  author  of  the  earliest  Latin  version,  in  a  letter 
addressed  five  years  later  to  Browne,  gives  some 
curious  particulars  as  to  the  reception  of  Religio 
Medici  in  Holland  and  in  France.  The  first  publisher 
to  whom  this  John  Merry  weather  offered  his  manuscript 
took  it  to  Salmasius,  who  was  the  great  glory  of  Leyden, 
and  now  regarded  as  the  literary  dictator  of  Europe. 
Salmasius,  who  knew  very  little  indeed  about  English 
affairs,  nevertheless  posed  as  a  great  defender  of  the 
Stuart  crown,  and  was  pleased  to  be  the  opponent  of 
Milton,  and  consulted  about  English  politics.  He  kept 
the  Latin  Religio  Medici  by  him  for  three  months,  and 
then  told  the  translator  that  "it  contained  many 
things  well  said,  but  also  many  exorbitant  conceptions 
in  religion,"  and  that  it  would  "probably  find  but 
frowning  entertainment."  The  translator,  however, 
persisted  until  he  discovered  a  Leyden  printer  willing 
to  undertake  it. 

From  Leyden,  copies  of  Merry  weather's  translation 
were  sent  to  all  parts  of  western  Europe,  and  they 
seem  to  have  been  welcomed  everywhere.  But  the 
most  gratifying  reception  which  they  met  with  was  in 
Paris,  where  the  book  arrived  in  October  1644.  Of 
the  fate  of  the  book  among  the  French  we  have  very 
interesting  evidence  scattered  through  the  sparkling, 
easy,  and  sarcastic  letters  which  Guy  Patin  addressed  to 
his  friends.     This  eminent  physician  was  at  that  time 


58  SIR   THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

one  of  the  leaders  of  European  opinion.  A  man  of  the 
highest  scientific  attainments,  dean  of  the  faculty  of 
medicine  in  Paris,  and  king's  lecturer  at  the  College  de 
France,  Guy  Patin  had  opportunities  of  extending  the 
reputation  of  a  new  book  such  as  were  shared  by  few. 
He  was  orthodox,  yet  liberal ;  a  man  of  advanced  ideas, 
yet  untainted  by  the  charge  of  atheism.  An  experi- 
mental philosopher,  a  practical  physician,  a  brilliant 
man  of  letters,  Patin's  position  was  not  without  a 
certain  likeness  to  that  of  the  Norwich  medicus,  but  it 
was  as  central  as  Browne's  was  provincial.  The  ear- 
liest of  Patin's  references  to  the  new  English  volume 
occurs  in  a  letter  of  October  1644  :  — 

^'  Un  petit  livre  nouveau  intitule  Religio  Medici  fait  par  un 
Anglais  et  traduit  en  latin  par  quelque  Hollandais.  C'est  un 
livre  tout  gentil  et  curieux,  mais  fort  delicat  et  tout  mystique  ; 
I'auteur  ne  manque  pas  d'esprit ;  vous  y  verrez  d'etranges  et 
ravissantes  pensees.  II  n'y  a  encore  guere  de  livres  de  cette 
sorte.  S'il  etait  ^Dermis  aux  savants  d'ecrire  ainsi  librement, 
on  nous  apprendroit  beaucoup  de  nouveautes  ...  la  subtilite 
de  I'esprit  humain  se  pourroit  decouvrir  par  cette  voie." 

This  is  by  far  the  most  penetrating  contemporary 
judgment  which,  so  far  as  we  know,  was  passed  on 
Beligio  Medici.  Nothing  to  approach  it,  indeed,  was 
said,  until  Coleridge  began  to  scribble  notes  on  the 
edges  of  the  reprint  of  1802.  It  was  probably  owing 
to  the  interest  awakened  by  Guy  Patin,  that  although 
there  was  another  Leyden  edition  of  1644,  this  did  not 
suffice  for  Paris.     Merry  weather  told  Browne  :  — 

"  When  I  came  to  Paris  the  next  year  [1645],  I  found  it 
printed  again,  in  which  edition  both  the  Epistles  were  left 
out,  and  a  preface  by  some  papist  put  in  their  place,  in  which, 
making  use  of,  and  wresting  some  passages  in  your  book,  he 


11.]  BELiaiO  MEDIGI  59 

endeavoured  to  show  that  nothing  but  custom  and  education 
kept  you  from  their  Church." 

This  Paris  reprint  created  a  great  stir  in  France, 
where  some  people  took  the  view  indicated  by  the 
preface,  while  others  were  inclined  to  charge  the  author 
with  heresy  and  infidelity.  Guy  Patin  again  comes  to 
our  help  in  a  delightful  letter  of  April  16,  1645,  ad- 
dressed to  the  Troyes  physician,  Belin :  — 

^'  On  fait  ici  grand  etat  du  livre  intitule  Religio  Medici ; 
cet  auteur  a  de  I'esprit.  C'est  un  melancholique.agreable  en 
ses  pensees,  mais  qui,  a  mon  jugement,  cherche  maitre  en  fait 
de  religion,  comme  beaucoup  d'autres,  et  peut-etre  qu'enfin 
il  n'en  trouvera  aucun.  II  faut  dire  de  lui  ce  que  Philippe 
de  Commines  a  dit  du  fondateur  des  Minimes,  Termite  de 
Calabre,  Francois  de  Paule, '  II  est  encore  en  vie,  il  pent  aussi 
bien  empirer  qu'amender ! '  " 

This  is  very  amusing,  and  we  may  suspect  that  the 
adroit  Parisian  critic  hoped  to  see  Browne  come  forth 
in  more  definite  revolt.  He  was  disappointed,  if  so, 
but  he  never  lost  his  interest  in  Beligio  Medici.  When, 
in  1652,  a  certain  Levin  Nicholas  Moltke  put  forth  a 
tedious  and  pedantic  sheet  of  Annotations,  G-uy  Patin 
flew  into  a  passion  at  the  impertinence  of  the  man, 
and  declared  that  such  good  wine  as  Religio  Medici 
needed  no  presumptuous  German  bush.  As  late  as 
1657  we  find  Patin  true  to  his  enthusiastic  admiration 
of  Thomas  Browne,  '^  si  gentil  et  eveille  "  ;  and  when 
Edward  Browne  was  in  Paris  in  1664,  Patin,  meeting 
him  in  a  shop  by  accident,  "  saluted  me  very  kindly, 
asked  me  many  things  concerning  my  father,  whom 
he  knew  only  as  author  of  Religio  Medici,  discoursed 
with  me  very  lovingly,  and  told  me  he  would  write  to 
my  father."     Thomas  Browne  was  eager  to  hear  more 


60  SIE  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

about  his  first  kind  critic,  and  Edward,  who  attended 
Patin's  physic  lectures,  tells  him  that  Patin  "  is  very 
old,  yet  very  pleasant  in  his  discourse  and  hearty ;  he 
is  much  followed  [in  Paris],  is  a  Galenist,  and  doth 
often  laugh  at  the  chymists  " ;  after  the  lectures,  "  he 
answers  all  doubts  and  questions  proposed."  In  Sep- 
tember 1665,  further  courtesies  having  passed,  we  find 
Browne  telling  his  son  to  "present  my  services  and 
thanks  unto  Dr.  Patin,"  who  lived  on  until  1672,  dying 
full  of  honours  and  fame.  The  whole  episode  of  his 
relations  with  Browne  is  one  of  great  interest,  the 
more  as  it  was  unparalleled  at  that  time  in  the  literary 
history  of  England  and  France. 

The  spread  of  Browne's  fame  over  the  continent 
of  Europe  was  rapid.  As  early  as  1649,  a  foreign 
correspondent  was  able  to  assure  him  that  "a  good 
part  of  Christendom "  was  now  familiar  with  his 
character  and  work.  Eor  a  century  his  name  con- 
tinues to  recur  in  the  heavy  German  discussions  about 
atheism  and  superstition,  some  writers  claiming  that 
Browne  was  a  freethinker,  others  defending  his  ortho- 
doxy. Buddaeus  of  Jena,  drawing  up  a  list  of  English 
atheists,  put  Sir  Thomas  Browne's  name  into  it,  along 
with  those  of  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury,  Hobbes,  and 
Toland ;  while  Tobias  Wagner,  a  pillar  of  the  German 
Church  in  his  day,  declared  that  Religio  Medici  could 
scarcely  be  read  without  danger  of  infection.  All  this 
was  lumbering  and  ill-informed  criticism,  but  it  proves 
that  the  Norwich  physician  had  achieved  a  foreign 
reputation  denied  to  the  rest  of  his  contemporaries. 
When,  in  1652,  Levin  Nicholas  Moltke  published  his 
Annotations,  he  said '  that  he  had  been  first  led  to 
the  perusal  of  Religio  Medici  by  its  universal  fame  in 


II.]  BELIOIO  MEDICI  61 

England,  France,  Italy,  Holland,  and  Germany ;  and  he 
declared  that  at  the  time  he  wrote  all  those  countries 
were  ringing  with  the  applause  of  Browne.  ISTor  was 
this  vogue  confined  to  the  Latin  version,  for  before 
Browne  died,  his  book  had  appeared  in  French, 
German,  Dutch,  and  Italian  translations. 

To  return  to  England,  and  to  the  most  important  of 
all  the  native  criticisms  of  Browne,  a  study  of  Sir 
Kenelm  Digby's  Observations  of  1643  shows  that  what 
"thoroughly  touched  the  little  needle"  of  the  knight's 
soul  was  the  happy  temper  of  spiritual  liberty  which 
breathed  from  every  page  of  Religio  Medici.  Digby, 
w^ho  had  been  writing  a  treatise  on  the  immortality  of 
the  soul,  was  attracted  by  the  Platonism  of  Browne, 
with  which  he  found  himself  in  ardent  sympathy.  But 
he  thought  the  physician  a  little  too  much  bound  down 
to  earth  by  his  habits  of  physical  experiment,  and  he 
would  fain  have  found  his  conceptions  of  eternity  more 
transcendental.  Yet  "his  wishes  and  aims,  and  what 
he  pointeth  at,  speak  him  owner  of  a  noble  and  a 
generous  heart."  On  one  point,  Sir  Kenelm  Digby 
rises  superior  to  Browne,  whom  he  challenges,  with 
great  courage,  for  "knowing  that  there  are  witches." 
It  was  highly  dangerous  in  those  days  to  deny  the 
existence  of  such  malevolent  powers.  Digby  does  not 
go  so  far.  "  I  only  reserve  my  assent,"  he  says,  "  till  I 
meet  with  stronger  motives  to  carry  it.  And  I  confess 
I  doubt  much  of  the  efficacy  of  those  magical  rules  he 
speaketh  of,  as  also  of  the  finding  out  of  mysteries  by 
the  courteous  revelation  of  spirits." 

Many  of  Sir  Kenelm^s  thrusts  with  the  rapier  are 
highly  effective.  When  he  says  that  we  cannot  err  in 
taking  the  author  of  Religio  Medici  for  "  a  very  fine 


62  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

ingenious  gentleman,  but  how  deep  a  scholar  "  he  will 
not  presume  to  say,  he  insists  on  what  modern  criticism 
must  constantly  repeat,  that  it  is  the  art,  the  style, 
the  human  charm  of  Browne  that  matter,  and  not  his 
boasted  learning.  For  his  metaphysical  arguments, 
Digby  depends  upon  Thomas  White,  the  Albius  of 
Roman  controversy,  who  was  presently  to  push  his 
own  speculations  into  dangerous  fields.  It  is  odd  that 
he  reproves  the  personal  note  in  Brown's  treatise, 
and  those  confidences  about  himself,  and  his  tasks 
and  habits,  which  we  enjoy  so  much.  To  Digby  it 
seemed  that  these  could  "not  much  conduce  to  any 
man's  betterment " ;  and  he  urged  Browne  to  omit 
them  from  his  treatises  of  philosophy,  reserving  them 
for  that  '^  notable  romance  of  his  own  story  and  life  " 
which  he  doubted  not  that  Browne  might  "  profitably 
compose."  The  Observations,  however,  although  occa- 
sionally carping,  are  full  of  appreciative  comment,  and 
Sir  Kenelm's  summing-up  of  "  our  physician,"  as  he 
calls  Browne,  is  worth  quoting :  — 

"  Truly  I  must  needs  pay  him  as  a  dae  the  acknowledging 
his  pious  discourses  to  be  excellent  and  pathetical  ones,  con- 
taining worthy  motives,  to  incite  one  to  virtue  and  to  deter 
one  from  vice.  .  .  .  Assuredly  he  is  owner  of  a  solid  head, 
and  of  a  strong,  generous  heart.  Where  he  employeth  his 
thoughts  upon  such  things  as  resort  to  no  higher  or  more 
abstruse  principles  than  such  as  occur  in  ordinary  conversa- 
tion with  the  world,  or  in  the  common  track  of  study  and 
learning,  I  know  no  man  would  say  better.  But  when  he 
meeteth  with  such  difficulties  as  concerning  the  resurrection 
of  the  body,  ...  I  do  not  at  all  wonder  he  should  tread  a 
little  away  and  go  astray  in  the  dark,  for  I  conceive  his  course 
of  life  hath  not  permitted  him  to  allow  much  time  unto  the 
unwinding  of  such  entangled  and  abstracted  subtilties.    But, 


II.]  BELIGIO  MEDICI  63 

if  it  had,  I  believe  his  natural  parts  are  such  as  he  might 
have  kept  the  chair  from  most  men  I  know,  for  even  where 
he  roveth  widest,  .  .  .  most  assuredly  his  wit  and  sharpness 
is  of  the  finest  standard." 

Browne  was,  however,  to  meet  with  something  other 
than  unstinted  praise.  Even  he  was  to  be  the  victim 
of  a  fiierce  reviewer.  The  eccentric  poetaster  Edward 
Benlowes,  a  Catholic  who  had  just  turned  Protestant 
and  who  yearned  to  show  his  zeal  for  Anglican 
doctrine,  urged  Alexander  Eoss,  an  active  Scottish 
pamphleteer  of  the  age,  familiar  now  to  readers  of 
Hudibras,  to  confute  the  errors  of  Religio  Medici. 
Other  friends  entreated  that  Kenelm  Digby  should 
be  castigated  at  the  same  time,  and  accordingly, 
in  1645,  Eoss  published  Medicus  Medicatus:  or  the 
Physicimi's  Religion  cur^d  by  a  lenitive  or  gentle  potion. 
This  was  pronounced  by  John  Downham  and  other 
rigid  Puritans  to  be  a  "  learned,  sound,  and  solid  "  con- 
tribution to  philosophy,  and  Dr.  Johnson  writes  too 
hastily  when  he  says  that  the  Medicus  Medicatus  was 
^^universally  neglected."  There  are  always  several 
people  who  are  particularly  pleased  to  see  a  successful 
writer  attacked,  and  Eoss  enjoyed  a  ripple  of  reaction. 
That  Browne,  made  too  sensitive  perhaps  by  all  the 
flattery  of  his  book,  was  seriously  annoyed  seems  to 
be  shown  by  the  fact  that  as  late  as  1647  his  disciples, 
such  as  Henry  Bates,  were  still  consoling  him  with 
assurances,  which  indeed  were  true  enough,  that  all 
Eoss  had  done  was  "  but  a  foil  to  set  off  and  illustrate  " 
Browne's  "  gallant  thoughts." 

The  Medicus  Medicatus,  nevertheless,  is  clever,  and 
it  is  a  type  of  the  objections  which  a  certain  class  of 
mind  will  always  bring   against   Browne's  writings. 


64  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

Eoss  calls  him  sharply  to  account  for  his  sentimen- 
tality, his  rhetoric,  his  looseness  of  logical  sequence. 
He  treats  him  as  a  smart  schoolmaster  treats  an 
absent-minded  little  boy.  There  is  something  very 
ludicrous  in  the  mode  he  adopts,  for  he  quotes  long 
passages  from  Religio  Medici  in  order  that  he  may 
refute  them;  and  we  have  the  illusion  that  Browne 
stands  there,  talking  in  his  dreamy  way,  only  to  get  a 
sudden  rap  over  the  knuckles  from  the  ferule  of  the 
pedagogue.  Eoss  is  indignant  at  Browne's  vague 
tenderness  to  the  Catholics,  and  is  suspicious  of  his 
orthodoxy  generally.  His  thrusts  are  often  shrewd 
enough,  and  would  be  telling,  if  we  could  only  per- 
suade ourselves  to  look  at  the  visionary,  beautiful 
treatise  in  this  prosaic  way.  Even  Eoss  submits  at 
last  to  the  exquisite  magic  of  the  book,  for,  after 
having  been  as  rude  to  it  as  possible,  he  suddenly 
acknowledges  that  "there  is  much  worth  and  good 
language  in  it."  But  this  late  concession  can  have 
done  little  to  soothe  the  feelings  of  the  ruffled 
physician  of  Norwich. 

It  will  be  seen  by  a  comparison  of  all  these  speci- 
mens of  contemporary  criticism,  that  the  religious 
aspect  of  the  book  offered  a  difficulty  to  all  readers. 
What  was  the  author's  exact  relation  to  the  faith  of 
his  time  ?  To  this  question  there  was  no  positive 
reply,  and  people  accepted  or  did  not  accept  Browne's 
eager  protestation  of  his  own  orthodoxy.  We  may 
believe  that  he  was  not  quite  logical  himself,  and  that 
he  was,  as  we  have  said,  a  bewitching  artist  rather 
than  a  penetrative  and  original  thinker.  It  is  amusing 
to  note  that  Coleridge,  when  he  was  reading  the 
earlier  sections  of  Beligio  Medici^  came  to  the  con- 


II.]  BELiaiO  MEDICI  65 

elusion  that  "  had  Sir  T.  B.  lived  nowadays,  he  would 
probably  have  been  a  very  ingenious  and  bold  infidel." 
At  other  times,  Coleridge  gives  Browne  credit  for 
unshaken  faith  built  upon  a  humble  confidence  in 
revelation.  Perhaps  some  light  on  this  paradox  may 
be  given  by  a  reference  to  the  vicissitudes  of  belief  in 
the  conscience  of  another  and  a  far  greater  philosopher 
of  Browne's  own  age. 

We  may  observe,  then,  that  the  attitude  of  Browne 
to  religion  and  science  is  almost  exactly  that  which 
Pascal  adopted,  with  a  more  lucid  definition,  in  the 
Preface  du  TraiU  du  Vide,  published  four  years  later 
than  Religio  Medici.  Both  the  French  and  the 
English  philosopher  alike  held,  at  that  time,  that 
the  two  realms  are  entirely  distinct.  In  theology  all 
depends  upon  authority  and  tradition,  all  has  been 
long  ago  settled  for  us  for  ever.  In  science,  authority 
does  not  exist  in  itself,  but  has  to  be  constantly  aug- 
mented and  verified  by  the  process  of  experiment. 
The  one  is  stationary,  the  other  incessantly  in  develop- 
ment. But  while  Browne,  like  Pascal,  before  1647, 
believed  in  progress  and  evolution,  he  believed  in 
them  only  in  relation  to  physical  knowledge,  which 
the  patient  labour  of  man  is  for  ever  making  more 
full  and  more  exact.  Neither  the  one  nor  the  other 
allowed  science  to  interfere  in  the  slightest  degree  with 
the  domain  of  faith  or  with  the  dogmatism  of  moral 
ideas.  Both  of  them  looked  upon  the  generations  of 
humanity  as  a  single  man,  whose  conduct  in  the  course 
of  the  centuries  was  guided  by  one  set  of  stationary 
injunctions,  beyond  and  above  his  powers  of  dis- 
cussion, but  whose  knowledge  of  physical  facts  was 
continually  extending.     To  this  class  of  devout  inves- 


66  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

tigator,  sincerely  pious,  but  without  a  trace  of  cre- 
dulity when  his  attention  is  called  to  the  phenomena 
of  physical  nature,  many  eminent  men  of  science  have 
belonged.  We  have  but  to  recollect  that  Michael 
Faraday  pursued  his  magnificent  investigations  in 
electromagnetism  with  the  utmost  independence,  while 
at  the  same  time  identifying  his  faith  in  humble  piety 
with  that  of  the  straitest  sect  of  the  Sandemanians. 
He  claimed,  he  said,  "  an  absolute  distinction  between 
religious  and  ordinary  belief.'^ 

This  compromise  sufficed  for  the  author  of  Religio 
Medici  throughout  his  long  life.  But  the  logic  of 
Pascal  was  more  profound,  and  his  knowledge  of 
himself  more  thorough.  After  his  conversion,  the 
compromise  between  science  and  religion  became  in- 
tolerable to  him.  He  wrote  that  section  of  the  Pensees 
which  treats,  with  how  severe  a  disdain,  "  de  la  f olie 
de  la  science  humaine  et  de  la  philosophic,"  and  he 
repudiated  as  presumptuous  the  curiosity  which  had 
led  him,  in  his  younger  days,  to  attempt  to  fathom 
the  mysteries  of  physical  knowledge.  He  regarded 
all  attempts  at  increasing  the  stores  of  human  equip- 
ment as  so  many  futile  acts  of  encouragement  given 
to  man's  "  dignity "  and  '^  greatness,"  whereas  all 
knowledge  should  begin  with  the  acceptance  of  the 
fact  that  the  spirit  of  man  is  utterly  mean  and  small, 
and  can  be  lifted  by  no  power  whatever,  except  that 
of  a  humble  resignation  to  the  will  of  God.  The  easy 
optimism  of  Browne  was  never  troubled  with  these 
ascetic  scruples.  He  was  much  less  rigorous  a  logician 
than  Pascal,  and,  besides,  he  started  from  different  pre- 
misses. He  pursued  his  useful  and  entertaining  course 
quite  indifferent  to  and  unconscious  of  the  agonies  and 


II.]  BELIGIO  MEDICI  67 

exultancies  whicli  were  sapping  the  vital  forces  of  Ms 
great  contemporary  at  Port-Royal.  At  the  moment 
when  Pascal  died,  worn  out  by  the  ecstasy  of  his 
faith,  "the  world  forgetting,  by  the  world  forgot," 
Browne  was  prosperously  collecting  bird's  eggs  and 
medals  on  week-days,  and  attending  divine  worship  at 
St.  Peter's  church  in  Norwich  upon  Sundays.  No 
two  careers  could  have  diverged  more  strangely,  yet 
it  is  worth  remembering  that  there  had  been  a 
time,  some  twenty  years  before,  when  the  attitude  of 
the  two  philosophers  had  been  practically  identical. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE    VULGAB  EBROBS 

Between  the  year  1636,  when  he  finished  Religio 
Medici,  and  1646,  when  he  published  in  folio  his 
massive  Pseudodoxia  Epidemica,  we  cannot  trace  any 
literary  work  in  which  Browne  was  certainly  engaged, 
other  than  jotting  down  and  arranging  the  notes 
which  were  to  form  his  "inquiries  into  very  many 
received  tenets  and  commonly  presumed  truths,  which 
examined  prove  but  Vulgar  and  Common  Errors.'' 
A  great  sensation  had  been  produced  in  the  course 
of  the  previous  generation  by  the  publication  of  two 
books  by  the  French  physician  Dr.  Laurent  Joubert, 
entitled  Paradoxa  Medica  and  De  Vulgi  Erroribus.  The 
vogue  of  these  works  had  been  extraordinary,  and 
when  Browne  was  at  Montpellier,  they  still  preserved 
their  celebrity.  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  the 
names  of  these  famous  volumes,  and  something  of 
their  scope,  unconsciously  affected  the  Norwich 
physician  in  the  choice  of  titles  for  his  great  treatise, 
although  he  is  careful  to  say  that  he  "  reaped  no 
advantage  "  from  the  study  of  Joubert,  and  that  he 
found  De  Vulgi  Erroribus  "  answering  scarce  at  all  to 
the  promise  of  the  inscription."  Joubert  exposed 
mistakes  which  empirical  doctors  were  in  the  habit 
of  making  in  the  treatment  of  disease,  but  that  was 
not  Browne's  purpose  in  any  degree. 

68 


CHAP.  III.]  THE    VULGAB  EBB0B8  69 

Our  medicus  is  very  anxious  that  we  should  give 
him  credit  for  the  novelty  of  his  design,  and  we 
have  to  admit  that  the  Vulgar  Errors  (as  Pseudodoxia 
Epidemica  is  usually  and  conveniently  styled)  was  a 
work  of  considerable  originality.  It  is  plain  that  the 
form  it  now  takes  was  the  result  of  accident,  not  of 
forethought.  The  book  was  composed  "by  snatches 
of  time " ;  Browne  quaintly  remarking  that  such  a 
work  as  this  is  not  to  be  "performed  upon  one  leg." 
It  could  not  be  written  rhetorically,  as  a  tour  de  force, 
nor,  as  so  much  of  the  so-called  rational  philosophy  of 
the  preceding  age  had  been  written,  in  the  study, 
with  Philemon  Holland's  translation  of  Pliny  open  at  a 
desk,  and  somebody's  comment  on  Dioscorides  sxjread 
out  upon  the  floor.  It  had  to  be  the  result  of  open- 
air  observation  and  personal  experiment.  Browne 
had  great  difficulties  in  his  pursuit  of  knowledge ;  as  a 
physician  of  steadily  growing  popularity  his  door  was 
never  quiet  nor  his  leisure  unmolested.  In  the  midst 
of  a  delicate  observation,  he  was  liable  to  be  called 
away  to  the  bed-side  of  a  patient.  But  he  must  have 
had  a  perfect  system  of  note-books,  to  harmonise  with 
his  insatiable  curiosity,  and  the  arrangement  of  his 
scattered  material  is  masterly.  His  first  intention  was 
to  write  his  book  in  Latin ;  but  he  was  happily  per- 
suaded that  he  owed  "  in  the  first  place  this  service  to 
our  country,"  and  secondly  that  such  a  work  was 
addressed  primarily  to  the  county  magnates,  to  our 
own  "ingenuous  gentry,"  and  that  they  were  begin- 
ning to  have  a  difficulty  in  reading  Latin  at  sight. 
Hence,  by  great  good  fortune,  Browne  deigned  to 
write  in  English. 

He   dismissed   his  bulky  folio  to   the   public,  not 


70  SIB  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

without  a  shiver  of  apprehension.  He  deprecated  the 
frown  of  theology.  But  he  knew  by  experience  that 
people  love  to  preserve  their  mistakes,  and  are  often 
heartily  vexed  to  be  set  right.  He  was  not  quite  sure 
of  the  countenance  of  his  brothers  in  physic,  who 
might  not  be  pleased  at  so  wholesale  a  discomfiture 
of  the  errors  of  mankind.  But  Browne  trusted  to  the 
scythe  of  time  and  to  the  hopeful  dominion  of  truth, 
and  believed  that  he  would  ultimately  be  regarded 
as  a  public  benefactor.  It  is  necessary  to  remind  our- 
selves that  his  great  object  was  to  enforce  experimental 
and  exact  knowledge,  to  excite  the  eye  and  fix  it  upon 
material  objects.  As  a  naturalist  and  a  physician, 
Browne  saw  the  great  error  of  the  age  to  be  an  obse- 
quious acceptance  of  traditional  accounts  of  things 
which  were,  really,  under  our  own  eyes  day  after  day. 
Let  us  pay  less  humble  a  service,  he  says  in  effect,  to 
the  much-vaunted  ancients.  Albertus  Magnus  had  de- 
clared that  if  you  hang  up  a  dead  kingfisher  by  the 
bill  it  will  "  show  in  what  quarter  the  wind  is  by  an 
occult  and  secret  propriety,  converting  the  breast  to 
that  point  of  the  horizon  from  whence  the  wind  doth 
blow.''  Very  well;  but  on  Yare  and  on  Wensum,  rivers 
of  Norfolk,  there  are  plenty  of  kingfishers.  Shoot  one 
and  hang  it  up,  and  see  for  yourself  whether  it  does 
show  in  what  quarter  the  wind  is. 

Browne's  just  complaint  against  the  conventional 
science  of  his  day  was  that  it  turned  its  back  on  nature 
in  a  slavish  appeal  to  tradition.  It  did  not  trust  to 
clinical  experiment;  it  repeated  for  the  thousandth 
time  the  formulas  of  Galen  and  Hippocrates.  It  did 
not  look  carefully  at  animals  and  plants,  it  merely 
quoted  reverently  what  the  disciples  of  Aristotle  had 


"!•]  THE    VULGAR  EBB  OB S  71 

said.      It  took   for   granted,   as   Browne   excellently 
remarks,  that  "  intellectual  acquisition  is  but  reminis- 
cential    evocation,    and    new    impressions    but    the 
colouring  of  old  stamps  which  stood  pale  in  the  soul 
before.'^     This  latter  phrase  exactly  expresses  what  it 
was  that  Browne  had  to  combat  in  his  more  intelligent 
readers.      They  had  a  dim  recollection   that    it  was 
understood  that  the  elephant  has  no  joints,  and  that, 
as  it  cannot  lie  down,  it  sleeps  erect  against  a  tree. 
They  looked  into  their  old  authorities,  and  found  that 
Diodorus  Siculus  had  said  this,  and  that  Strabo  had 
confirmed  it.     That  was  enough  for  them ;  they  had 
coloured  the  old  pale  stamp  in  their  souls,  and  this 
they  thought  to  be  a  sufficient  pursuit  of  knowledge 
as  to  the  articulation  of  pachyderms.      But  Browne 
wished  to  show  them  that  "an  old  and  grey-headed 
error  ^^  like  this  is  not  to  be  verified  and  made  gospel 
of  by  a  reference  to  what  ancient  Greek  naturalists 
may  have  reported,  but-  should  be  tested  anew  by  living 
facts.     He  reminds  his  contemporaries  that  "not  many 
years  past,  we  had  the  advantage  in  England  of  an 
elephant   shown  in  many  parts  thereof.''      Did  this 
elephant  kneel  and  lie  down  ?     To  be  sure  it  did,  in 
the  sight  of  a  cloud  of  witnesses.     Why,  then,  repeat 
and  repeat  the  result  of  a  lack  of  careful  observation 
on  the  part  of  certain  ancient  authors,  merely  because 
they  were  ancient  ? 

Browne  makes  his  appearance  as  the  champion  of 
nature,  throwing  down  the  gauntlet  to  those  who 
refuse  to  look  "beyond  the  shell  and  the  obvious 
exteriors  of  things,''  and  who  build  up  theories  to 
account  for  that  which  they  have  only  read  about,  not 
seen  or  felt.     He  is  in  all  this  the  disciple  of  Bacon,  or 


72  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

would  have  been,  if  lie  had  exactly  comprehended  what 
"the  lord  of  Verulam"  had  designed  to  teach.  It 
was  now  a  quarter  of  a  century  since  the  Novum 
Organum,  and  with  it  a  new  great  light  of  natural 
philosophy,  had  risen  upon  the  world.  There  is  no 
doubt  for  us,  and  there  was  probably  but  little  doubt 
for  Browne,  that  the  outline  of  all  future  interpretation 
of  the  facts  of  nature  was  divined  by  Bacon  in  his 
celebrated  doctrine  of  the  necessity  of  the  systematic 
examination  of  facts.  This  was  his  great  contribution 
to  thought;  and  if  his  tremendous  Instauratio,  that 
encyclopaedia  of  knowledge,  had  ever  been  carried  out, 
in  the  third  book  of  it,  as  Eobert  Leslie  Ellis  has 
said,  "all  the  phenomena  of  the  universe  were  to  be 
stored  up  in  a  treasure-house,"  and  were  to  be  the 
materials  on  which  the  new  method  of  philosophy 
was  to  be  employed.  But  it  seems  certain  that 
Browne  was  rather  dim  in  his  perception  of  what 
Bacon's  drift  had  been,  and  certainly  he  shrank  from 
an  enterprise  so  vast  as  Bacon  had  recommended. 

We  cannot  too  often  remind  ourselves  in  considering 
the  apparently  stationary  character  of  English  scien- 
tific theory  during  the  thirty  years  which  lay  between 
the  death  of  Bacon  and  the  rise  of  the  Invisible 
Philosophers,  that  Bacon  was  at  once  far  ahead  of 
his  time  and  yet  scarcely  a  stimulating  influence.  He 
foresaw,  he  cast  forth  brilliant  intuitions,  but  he  did 
not  undertake  the  work  which  he  recommended.  He 
speaks  of  himself,  very  justly,  as  of  "an  image  in  a 
cross-way,  that  may  point  out  the  way,  but  cannot  go 
it."  His  genius,  colossal  as  it  was,  was,  after  all,  finite. 
In  1591,  Bacon,  still  young  and  hopeful,  told  Lord 
Burghley  that  he  had  taken  all  knowledge  for  his 


III.]  THE    VULGAR  EBB  OB S  73 

province,  "to  purge  it  of  frivolous  disputations  and 
blind  experiments."  But  he  was  not  Briareus  or  Argus, 
and  he  failed  by  reason  of  the  enormous  scope  which 
he  had  set  before  his  mortal  hands  and  eyes.  He 
wanted  to  do  so  much,  he  saw  so  much  that  had  to 
be  done,  that  he  practically  did  nothing  but  dream, 
and,  as  he  said,  point  out  the  way.  The  scientific  men 
of  the  Restoration,  who  took  up  at  last  the  gigantic 
schemes  Bacon  had  sketched,  called  him  Moses  upon 
Mount  Pisgah,  because  they  perceived  that,  with  all 
his  clairvoyance,  he  had  never  entered  the  promised 
land. 

Browne's  attitude  to  this  condition  must  not  be 
exaggerated.  There  is  no  evidence  that  he  had  grasped 
the  plan  of  Bacon's  huge  fragments  very  thoroughly. 
He  also  stood  on  the  slopes  of  Pisgah,  but  he  aimed  at 
no  tremendous  conquests.  He  had  devoted  his  leisure 
to  ''  sober  inquiries  into  the  doubtful  appertinancies 
of  arts  and  receptories  of  philosophy,"  but  his  interest 
lay  in  specific  and  positive  cases,  not  in  wide  sweeps 
of  theoretical  reasoning.  In  the  Vulgar  Errors  we  find 
him  a  naturalist,  rather  than  a  philosopher,  just  as  in 
Religio  Medici  we  found  him  an  artist  rather  than 
a  theologian.  If  we  chose  to  be  harsh  with  Browne, 
we  might  find  that  he  himself  is  not  a  little  victimised 
by  vulgar  errors,  tainted  with  thaumaturgy,  tempted 
into  false  and  chimerical  byways  of  science,  a  dabbler 
in  necromancy,  witchcraft,  and  the  philosopher's  stone. 
On  all  this  posterity  does  not  love  to  dwell.  But  we 
must  take  it  into  consideration  when  we  have  to  admit 
that  all  his  book  does  is  to  mark  a  step  on  the  ladder 
of  human  knowledge,  a  safe  and  humdrum  step.  It 
is  not  a  great  leap  up  among  the  stars  like  the  Novum 


74  SIR   THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

Organum,  and  in  point  of  fact  there  is  little  profit  in 
trying  to  compare  Browne  with  Bacon. 

But  he  had  certainly  learned  the  one  golden  rule 
of  the  new  philosophy,  that  the  examination  of  facts 
must  always  precede  generalisation  and  theory.  This 
is  the  mainstay  of  the  Vulgar  Errors,  which  is  a  wise 
book  whenever  it  leans  on  this  principle  —  an  absurd 
and  tottering  book  whenever  it  rejects  it.  Browne's 
danger  —  and  he  seems  to  have  been  aware  of  it  —  was 
to  fall  into  fresh  error  in  the  very  act  of  exposing 
error.  But  he  was  not  very  anxious  about  this,  because, 
as  he  rather  elaborately  expresses  it,  "  these  weeds,"  — 
that  is  to  say,  such  mistakes  as  he  himself  may  make  — 
"must  lose  their  alimental  sap  and  wither  of  them- 
selves," "  except  they  be  watered  from  higher  regions 
and  fructifying  meteors  of  knowledge."  Perhaps  he 
was  thinking  of  the  lamentable  errors  into  which  some 
of  the  most  ardent  spirits  of  the  sixteenth  century  had 
fallen,  such  as  his  own  Paracelsus,  and  that  astonishing 
genius  Cardan,  who,  in  his  hatred  of  Aristotle,  and  in  his 
wild  vagaries  of  speculation,  had  come  to  be  regarded 
as  the  type  of  the  charlatanism  of  the  age,  and  who 
yet,  in  all  probability,  was  at  heart  a  seeker  after  truth. 
All  this  result  of  confused  fancy  and  disordered  erudi- 
tion was  on  the  borderland  of  m,adness;  if  Browne 
should  by  chance  fall  back  across  it,  his  comfort  lay  in 
his  knowledge  that  such  error  is  ephemeral. 

He  had  a  shocking  example  of  obstinate  error  in  the 
one  direct  English  predecessor  whom  he  names.  Dr. 
James  Primrose,  of  Hull,  like  Browne  a  pupil  in  the 
school  of  Montpellier,  had,  in  1638,  while  Browne  was 
at  work  on  his  great  book,  published  a  treatise,  De 
Vulgi  in  Medicina  Erroi^ibus,  which  was  very  widely 


III.]  THE    VULGAR  EBBOBS  75 

read.  Unhappily,  one  of  tlie  errors  which  Dr.  Prim- 
rose most  manfully  exposed  was  Harvey's  discovery  of 
the  circulation  of  the  blood.  Primrose  was  '^remark- 
able for  any  characteristic  rather  than  that  of  a  candid 
spirit  in  pursuit  of  truth."  He  abounded  in  obstinate 
denial  of  any  new  observation,  and  Willis,  in  the  next 
generation,  signalled  Primrose  as  one  who  in  the  whole 
course  of  his  numerous  writings  "  appeals  not  once 
to  experiment  as  a  means  of  investigation."  In  his 
colleague  at  Hull,  then,  Browne  had  before  him  an 
example  of  that  reaction  against  the  spirit  of  Bacon 
and  Harvey  which  appeared,  about  1650,  to  be  fraught 
with  so  many  dangers  for  English  science.  It  is  in- 
finitely to  Browne's  credit  that,  with  the  expectation 
of  scandal  on  one  side  and  of  error  on  the  other,  he 
nevertheless  summoned  up  courage  ''to  stand  alone 
against  the  strength  of  opinion  and  to  meet  the  Goliath 
and  giant  of  Authority  with  contemptible  pebbles,  and 
feeble  arguments  drawn  from  the  scrip  and  slender 
stock"  of  his  own  experiment. 

We  are  too  apt  to  suppose  that  in  exposing  vulgar 
errors  Browne  was  attacking  the  errors  of  the  vulgar. 
But  this  was  not  the  case ;  he  did  not  venture  down 
into  the  vast  hollows  of  popular  superstition  and 
ignorance.  The  tales  he  refutes  are  often  so  mon- 
strous that  we  easily  fancy  that  they  must  have  been 
those  of  the  unthinking  masses ;  but  Browne  particu- 
larly says  that  he  has  not  addressed  his  pen  or  style 
"  unto  the  People,  —  whom  books  do  not  address  and 
who  are  in  this  way  incapable  of  reduction,  —  but  unto 
the  knowing  and  leading  part  of  Learning."  Certainly, 
a  perusal  of  this  volume  may  give  us  an  astounding 
idea  of  what  professors  of  both  universities,  clergymen, 


76  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

doctorsj  lawyers,  and  squires  believed  and  perpetuated 
in  the  way  of  superstition  while  Charles  i.  was  still 
upon  the  throne  of  England.  If  Browne's  light  some- 
times seems  glimmering  to  us,  like  that  twilight  which 
astronomers  say  is  all  that  illuminates  the  planet 
Jupiter  at  high  noon,  what  are  we  to  think  of  the 
darkness  of  his  contemporaries  ?  The  obstinate  fault 
they  all  indulged  was  the  habit  of  saying,  "  Such  and 
such  thing  is  not,  because  Pliny  says  it  is  not."  But 
it  moves  or  grows  at  your  very  door ;  look  and  see !  — 
"I  will  not  look;  Pliny  says  it  is  not,  therefore  it 
cannot  be."  It  was  Browne's  aim  to  awaken  an  intel- 
lectual conscience  in  the  learned  men  of  his  time,  and 
to  prove  to  them  that  they  were  doing  a  grave  wrong 
to  the  race  by  shutting  their  eyes  against  the  truth 
thus  obstinately. 

He  could  not  destroy  supernaturalism  by  simply 
contradicting  its  statements.  He  had  to  demonstrate 
by  facts,  by  an  appeal  to  a  present  reality,  that  those 
statements  were  not  in  accordance  with  fact.  His 
strength,  therefore,  lay  in  clinging,  through  evil  report 
and  good  report,  to  what  is  palpable  and  visible,  since 
what  he  was  combating  was  not  merely  ignorance,  it 
was  wilful  and  bigoted  ignorance.  False  representa- 
tions in  pictures  troubled  him  very  much;  but  in  this 
respect  the  seventeenth  century  was  inconsistent.  It 
encouraged  at  once  the  worst  and  the  best.  In  the 
matter  of  botany,  in  which  Browne  took  a  particular 
interest,  there  was  the  utmost  discrepancy  between 
the  rude  and  false  drawings  of  flowers  which  were 
commonly  distributed,  and  the  woodcuts  in  Gerard's 
Herbal  and  in  the  Paradisus  of  Parkinson,  the  accuracy 
of  which  is  scarcely  to  be  impeached  by  the  science  of 


III.]  THE    VULGAR  EBB  OH S  77 

to-day,  even  when  supported  by  photography.  It  was 
a  transitional  age  in  which  Browne  lived,  and  it  culti- 
vated extremes  of  ignorance  and  knowledge  which  it 
is  difficult  for  us  to  appreciate. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  those  chapters  of  the 
Vulgar  Errors  which  deal  with  zoology  are  the  most 
picturesque.  Mistakes  about  minerals  and  "terreous 
bodies  "  no  longer  excite  any  emotion,  but  the  cocka- 
trice and  the  unicorn  are  always  welcome.  This,  too, 
seems  to  be  the  section  upon  which  the  author  has 
expended  most  mental  energy.  It  is,  however,  the 
barest  justice  to  say  that  Browne  could  not  have 
carried  out  his  ingenious  and  entertaining  labours 
without  the  aid  of  a  predecessor  whom  he  names, 
indeed,  with  consideration,  but  hardly,  we  may  think, 
with  all  that  gratitude  which  his  immense  services  to 
natural  history  demanded.  Ulisse  Aldrovandi,  who 
died  at  Bologna  about  the  year  in  which  Browne  was 
born,  had  devoted  all  his  long  life  and  all  his  con- 
siderable fortune  to  the  collection  and  illustration  of 
animal,  vegetable,  and  mineral  specimens,  and  he 
undertook  the  crushing  task  of  re-writing,  on  a  vast 
scale,  with  plates  as  accurate  as  he  could  make  them, 
and  with  constant  reference  to  the  object  before  him, 
the  natural  history  of  the  world  as  Pliny  had  conceived 
it.  He  gathered  a  school  of  naturalists  around  him, 
and  set  them  to  work  on  various  sections  of  the  plan ; 
they  carried  it  on  long  after  his  death,  and,  indeed, 
the  enormous  book  —  the  first  volume  of  which,  treat- 
ing of  birds,  had  appeared  in  1599  —  was  not  completed 
until  1642,  when  Browne  had  already  begun  to  work 
on  the  Vulgar  Errors.  Among  the  naturalists  of  the 
early  seventeenth  century,  Aldrovandi  was  known  by 


78  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

the  title  of  Pontifex  Maximus,  and  lie  deserved  the 
distinction.  The  liberality  of  his  views  and  his  courage 
in  expressing  them  led  to  his  being  persecuted  for 
heresy,  but  Bologna  seems  to  have  been  proud  to  pro- 
tect the  high  priest  of  science.  In  the  course  of 
centuries,  the  huge  illustrated  compilation  of  Aldro- 
vandi,  which  has  neither  the  picturesqueness  of  earlier 
fabulous  zoologies  nor  the  exactitude  of  later  investi- 
gation, has  come  to  be  treated  as  waste  paper,  but  it 
had  a  wide  effect  in  clearing  away  those  very  popular 
errors  against  which  Browne  contends. 

What  is  more  extraordinary  than  Browne's  lack  of 
enthusiasm  for  Aldrovandi,  is  his  almost  complete 
neglect  of  Konrad  Gesner  (1516-65),  whose  great  work, 
the  Historia  Animalium  (1551-58)  he  barely  refers 
to  once  or  twice.  Gesner,  who  is  greatly  praised  by 
Cuvier,  as  practically  the  founder  of  modern  zoology, 
stood  in  many  respects  ahead  of  Browne  in  the  exact 
knowledge  of  facts  about  animals.  The  English  para- 
phrases of  Gesner,  brought  out  by  the  Eev.  Edward 
Topsell,  the  History  of  Four-Footed  Beasts  (1607)  and 
the  History  of  Serpents  (1608),  had  been  extremely 
popular.  These  folios,  full  of  amazing  pictures,  were 
the  terror  and  delight  of  all  good  Jacobean  children  ; 
and  it  is  certain  that  Browne  must  have  been  familiar 
with  them. 

Browne  is  happiest  when  he  speaks  of  what  he  has 
seen  himself.  For  instance,  he  had  been  troubled  in 
mind  to  know  what  spermaceti  was.  The  philosophers 
had  various  absurd  theories  about  this  substance,  but 
the  one  thing  they  did  not  do  was  to  examine  the 
body  of  a  whale.  During  Browne's  early  life-time,  two 
great  whales  were  cast  up  on  the  coast  of  Norfolk,  the 


III.]  THE    VULGAB  EBB  OB S  79 

first  near  Wells,  the  second  at  Hunstanton.  It  is  a 
little  doubtful  from  his  language  whether,  in  one  of 
these  instances,  he  trusted  to  the  report  of  Sir  Hamon 
L'Estrange,  but  in  the  other  case  he  seems  certainly  to 
have  gone  down  to  the  shore  and  cut  up  the  monster 
himself.  The  fishermen  called  it  a  "gibbartas,"  by 
which  odd  name,  connected  with  the  word  "  gib,"  they 
doubtless  signified  a  whale  with  a  hump  or  bunch  on 
its  back.  Browne  says  it  was  not  a  proper  "  gib-fish," 
but  a  sperm-whale,  doubtless  what  we  should  call  a 
cachalot.  The  creature  had  been  dead  "  divers  days  " 
before  the  anatomist  reached  it ;  it  stank  horridly  and 
streams  of  oil  and  sperm  were  flowing  from  its  body. 
But  Browne  examined  the  "  magazine  of  spermaceti," 
and  found  it  "  in  the  head,  lying  in  folds  and  courses, 
in  the  bigness  of  goose  eggs,  encompassed  with  large 
flaky  substances  as  large  as  a  man's  head,  in  form  of 
honeycombs,  very  white  and  full  of  oil." 

The  Vulgar  Errors  lends  itself  less  favourably  than 
any  other  of  Browne's  books  to  the  process  of  quota- 
tion. It  is  a  pity  that  he  did  not  allow  himself  to 
expatiate  on  his  experiments  and  describe  more  freely 
some  of  his  personal  adventures  in  the  world  of  nature. 
We  find,  however,  in  the  course  of  the  chapter  about 
the  whale  of  Hunstanton,  a  passage  which  is  more 
characteristic  than  usual,  and  we  may  give  part  of  it 
as  a  favourable  example  of  the  manner  of  the  book :  — 

"  Had  the  abominable  scent  permitted,  inquiry  had  been 
made  into  that  strange  composure  of  the  head,  and  hillock  of 
flesh  about  it.  Since  the  workmen  affirmed,  they  met  with 
spermaceti  before  they  came  to  the  bone,  and  the  head  yet 
preserved  seems  to  confirm  the  same.  .  .  .  What  figure  the 
stomach  maintained  in  this  animal  of  one  Jaw  of  teeth  [might 


80  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

have  been  examined],  since  in  porpoises,  which  abound  in 
both,  the  ventricle  is  trebly  divided,  and  since  in  that  formerly 
taken  nothing  was  found  but  weeds  and  a  loligo  [a  small 
cuttlefish] ....  In  vain  was  it  to  rake  for  ambergreece  in  the 
paunch  of  this  Leviathan,  as  Greenland  discoverers  and  at- 
tests of  experience  declare  that  they  sometimes  swallow 
great  lumps  thereof  in  the  sea,  insufferable  f oetor  denying  that 
inquiry.  And  yet  if,  as  Paracelsus  encourageth,  ordure 
makes  the  best  musk,  and  from  the  most  fetid  substances 
may  be  drawn  the  most  odoriferous  essences,  all  that  had 
not  Vespasian's  nose  might  boldly  swear,  here  was  a  subject 
fit  for  such  extractions."  ^ 

The  way  in  which  the  mind  of  Browne  worked  in 
presence  of  a  popular  opinion  may  be  followed,  too,  in 
his  treatment  of  various  quadrupeds  which  came  under 
his  notice  in  the  Eastern  Counties.  It  was  generally 
believed,  and  stated  in  books  of  natural  history  which 
carried  considerable  authority,  that  the  legs  of  the 
badger  are  longer  on  the  right  side  than  on  the  left, 
and  that  therefore  he  cannot  run  with  ease  until  he 
gets  on  the  side  of  a  hill  or  the  slope  of  a  rut.  No 
one  has  suggested  a  more  reasonable  source  for  this 
delusion  than  that,  as  the  legs  of  the  badger  are  very 
short  and  his  harsh  coat  of  fur  very  long,  he  seems, 
as  he  shambles  along  on  his  plantigrade  feet,  to  repeat 
the  unevenness  of  the  ground  he  covers.    The  absurdity 

1  By  the  side  of  these  remarks  may  be  placed  Browne's  corre- 
spondence with  Dr.  Arthur  Bacon  of  Yarmouth,  and  a  passage  in 
his  posthumous  writings,  describing  the  stranding  and  cutting  up  of 
a  whale  in  1652.  He  held  correspondence  on  a  similar  subject  with 
Sir  Hamon  L'Estrange  in  1653  and  with  Dr.  Merrett  in  1669.  In 
Religio  Medici,  Browne  had  spoken  scornfully  of  whales,  as  "pro- 
digious pieces  of  nature  "  at  pictures  of  which  ruder  heads  than  his 
might  stand  amazed ;  but  we  see  that  he  became  deeply  excited 
when  they  actually  rolled  before  him  in  their  blubber  on  the  strands 
of  Norfolk. 


III.]  THE    VULGAB  EBBORS  81 

of  giving  him  legs  longer  on  the  right  side  than  the 
left,  in  order  that  he  might  be  level  as  he  hurries  along 
a  slope,  would  be  obvious,  one  would  think,  to  any  one 
who  realises  that  if  the  badger  had  to  run  over  the 
same  ground  in  the  opposite  direction,  nothing  could 
save  him  from  turning  heels  over  head.  It  is  charac- 
teristic of  Browne  that  he  takes  no  such  rude  short-cut 
to  knowledge  as  this.  He  has  to  deprecate  Albertus 
Magnus  and  to  shield  himself  behind  Aldrovandi, 
before  he  can  make  up  his  mind  that  the  theory  is 
repugnant  "to  the  three  determinators  of  truth, 
authority,  sense,  and  reason.'^  He  argues  with  great 
prolixity  that,  although  frogs  and  spiders  have  legs  of 
unequal  length,  the  inequality  is  between  pairs  and 
"opposite  joints  of  neighbour-legs'';  that  Aristotle 
has  held  an  odd  leg  to  be  repugnant  to  the  course  of 
nature ;  and  that  the  argument  from  the  lobster,  whose 
"  chely  or  great  claw "  is  larger  on  one  side  than  on 
the  other,  cannot  be  applied  to  the  badger,  because 
the  purpose  of  the  members  of  the  latter  is  progres- 
sion and  of  the  former  apprehension. 

Meanwhile,  we  cannot  help  asking  ourselves  why 
the  learned  sceptic  did  not  immediately  get  hold  of  a 
real  badger,  and  measure  his  legs.  He  says  that  "  upon 
indifferent  inquiry,  I  cannot  discover  this  difference  " 
in  the  length  of  them  ;  but  why  did  he  not  make  sure 
for  himself?  It  is  true  that  badgers  are  extremely 
shy  and  mysterious  in  their  movements,  and  that,  no 
doubt,  it  was  not  every  sportsman  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  Norwich  who  could  boast  of  having  dug  one 
out  of  its  earth.  It  is  perhaps  to  ask  too  much  for  us 
to  wish  that,  in  the  zeal  of  his  zoology,  Thomas  Browne 
himself,  with  a  sack  and  a  pair  of  badger-tongs,  and 


82  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

accompanied  by  some  trusty  yokels  and  a  cross-bred 
bnll-terrier  used  to  the  business,  should  have  worried 
the  bowels  of  earth  in  some  copse  on  a  starlight  night, 
and  have  procured  a  badger  for  himself.  But,  surely, 
an  observer  so  curious  might  have  bargained  with 
some  farmer  who  lived  out  Catton  way,  or  close  to  a 
snug  rabbit-warren  under  Earlham,  for  a  specimen  of 
so  common  an  animal.  He  comes  to  the  correct  con- 
clusion, that  the  monstrosity  is  ill-contrived,  "the 
shortness  being  affixed  unto  the  legs  of  one  side,  which 
might  have  been  more  tolerably  placed  upon  the 
thwart  OT  diagonial  movers."  Quite  so;  but  how 
briefly  the  question  might  have  been  settled  once  for 
all  with  a  tape  measure  on  the  dead  body  of  a 
badger.^ 

Browne  is  more  experimental  when  he  comes  to  the 
discussion  of  whether  moles,  or  "molls,"  have  eyes. 
Here  he  had  himself  examined  specimens,  and  had 
anatomised  them  too,  finding  their  eyes  to  be  fully 
developed.  He  had  kept  a  mole  in  a  glass  case  with 
a  toad  and  a  viper,  and  had  seen  that  it  killed  both 
these  reptiles  and  devoured  a  good  part  of  each  of 
them.  He  had  personally  observed  how  hard  it  is  to 
keep  moles  alive  out  of  the  earth  ;  and  he  had  noticed 
the  extraordinary  frenzy  of  ferocity  or  greed  with 
which  these  little  velvety  beings  fling  themselves  on 
their  prey.  He  understood  the  character  of  their  food, 
and  had  followed  their  movements  and  habits.     It  is 


1  This  was  actually  done  by  his  son,  Dr.  Edward  Browne, 
who  notes  in  his  diary  that,  on  the  10th  of  February  1664,  he 
dissected  a  badger.  As  he  was  then  living  in  his  father's 
house  in  Norwich,  we  may  suppose  that  the  author  of  the 
Vulgar  Errors  assisted  at  this  demonstration. 


III.]  THE    VULGAB  EBB  OB  S  83 

interesting  to  notice  how  clearly  he  speaks  when,  as 
in  this  chapter  about  moles,  or  "  molls,"  he  is  talking  of 
what  he  knows  from  personal  observation.  There  is 
no  reference  to  ancient  writers  here ;  but,  the  moment 
he  gets  away  from  his  own  experience,  a  sort  of  intel- 
lectual timidity  seizes  him.  If  Sammonicus  has  said 
something  absurd  about  the  water-rat,  and  if  Nicander 
has  libelled  the  shrew-mouse,  Browne  offers  no  resist- 
ance, because  he  has  no  personal  knowledge  of  shrews 
or  water-rats ;  but  about  the  mole  he  defies  every  one, 
even  Nonnus  himself.  Why,  in  a  land  of  roads  and 
rivers,  he  was  content  to  know  nothing  of  water-rats 
and  shrews,  it  is  beyond  our  powers  to  conjecture. 
But  it  was  part  of  Browne's  character ;  he  was  less  a 
man  of  science,  an  all-round  naturalist,  than  a  dreamer 
of  philosophic  dreams,  satisfied  with  brief  and  partial 
experiences. 

We  have  an  amusing  instance  of  this,  when  Browne 
comes  to  discourse  on  vulgar  errors  concerning  the 
swan.  In  the  preceding  generation  a  tremendous 
controversy  had  been  carried  on  by  those  two  pontiffs 
of  the  higher  scholarship,  Scaliger  and  Cardan,  on  the 
great  question  whether  swans  do,  or  do  not,  sing  as 
their  death  is  approaching.  Cardan  afSrmed  that  they 
invariably  do;  Scaliger  threw  contempt  on  such 
Grecian  mendacities.  Both  of  them  applied  to  ^lian, 
whose  oracle  seems  to  have  given  forth  an  uncertain 
sound.  But  Cardan  produced  the  support  of  Pliny, 
which  Scaliger  immediately  upset  by  reference  to 
"  Myndius  in  Athenseus."  In  the  midst  of  this  rever- 
beration, Aldrovandi  reported  that  dying  swans  had 
been  heard  to  sing,  quite  recently,  "  on  the  river  of 
Thames,  near  London."     One  would  imagine  that  the 


84  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

poems   of  Spenser  must  have  reached  Bologna,  and 
have  been  misquoted :  — 

"  Two  swans  of  goodly  hue, 
Come  softly  swimming  down  along  the  lee,  .  .  . 
Sweet  Thames,  run  softly,  till  they  end  their  song." 

But  the  question  of  the  swan-song,  seriously  involved 
by  discussions  as  to  "  the  serpentine  and  trumpet  recur- 
vation "  of  the  bird's  windpipe,  and  how  it  descendeth 
first  into  "  a  capsulary  reception  of  the  breast-bone," 
excited  Browne  to  an  unusual  degree.  It  is  amusing 
to  note  that,  instead  of  referring  at  once  to  the  every- 
day experiences  of  sailors  and  fishermen,  or  of  those 
whose  business  it  was  to  herd  swans  on  the  winding 
expanses  of  the  Bure,  he  approaches  the  matter  in  the 
following  transcendental  manner.  Nothing  can  be 
more  characteristic  of  the  temper  of  the  man  than  this 
romantic  exercise  on  the  flutes  and  soft  recorders  of 
style  :  — 

"  And  first  from  great  antiquity,  and  before  the  melody  of 
sirens,  the  musical  note  of  swans  hath  been  commended,  and 
that  they  sing  most  sweetly  before  their  death.  For  thus  we 
read  in  Plato,  that  from  the  opinion  of  metempsychosis,  or 
transmigration  of  the  soul  of  men  into  the  bodies  of  beasts 
most  suitable  unto  their  human  condition,  after  his  death, 
Orpheus  the  musician  became  a  swan.  Thus  was  it  the  bird 
of  Apollo,  the  god  of  music,  by  the  Greeks ;  and  an  hiero- 
glyphic of  music  among  the  Egyptians,  from  whom  the  Greek 
derived  the  conception  ;  hath  been  the  affirmation  of  many 
Latins ;  and  hath  not  wanted  assertors  almost  from  every 
nation." 

But  he  comes  back  to  his  experience  at  last.  He 
seems  to  have  dissected  swans,  with  whose  anatomy  he 
displays  considerable  familiarity,  and  he  has  made  wide 


III.]  THE    VULQAB  EBROBS  85 

inquiry  from  prosaic  persons  of  credit.  The  song  of 
the  dying  swan,  he  decides,  is  a  vulgar  error,  and  we 
must  abandon  it ;  but  in  the  very  act  of  doing  so,  he 
gathers  his  purple  robes  about  him  again,  and  this  is 
how  he  dismisses  it :  — 

"When,  therefore,  we  consider  the  dissention  of  the  authors, 
the  falsity  of  relations,  the  indisposition  of  the  organs,  and  the 
immusical  note  of  all  we  ever  beheld  or  heard  of ;  if  generally 
taken  and  comprehending  all  swans,  we  cannot  assent  thereto. 
Surely  he  that  is  bit  with  a  tarantula  shall  never  be  cured  by 
this  music ;  and  with  the  same  hopes  we  expect  to  hear  the 
harmony  of  the  spheres." 

This  must  be  held  to  be  an  instance,  however,  of 
Browne's  tendency,  in  his  wish  to  multiply  instances, 
to  slay  errors  that  were  slain  before.  Philemon 
Holland  (1601),  in  his  version  of  Pliny,  had  plainly 
laid  it  down  that  those  speak  "  untruly "  that  "  say 
that  swans  sing  lamentably  a  little  before  their  death, 
for  experience  in  many  hath  shown  the  contrary." 
Browne  had  the  excuse  of  being  able  to  give  an  ana- 
tomical exposition  of  the  absurdity,  but  long  before 
his  time  the  coronach  of  the  wild  swan  had  become 
the  exclusive  property  of  the  poets. 

He  had  told  us  in  Heligio  Medici  how  fond  he  was 
of  investigating  the  smaller  parts  of  nature,  and  we 
find  him  curious  far  beyond  his  age  about  insects 
and  molluscs  and  animalcules.  The  glow-worm,  as 
may  well  be  supposed,  had  greatly  excited  the  fancy 
of  the  superstitious.  There  must  always  be,  to  rustics 
and  to  children,  something  mysterious,  if  not  miracu- 
lous, about  those  waxing  and  waning  lamps  of  soft 
green  radiance,  alive  in  the  dark  grasses  of  a  summer 
night.     Browne's    contemporaries   believed    that    the 


86  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

light  of  the  glow-worm  was  perpetual,  and  that 
luminous  waters  could  be  distilled  from  it.  Browne 
caught  glow-worms  and  kept  them  alive  on  fresh  turf 
for  eighteen  days,  closely  examining  through  that  time 
the  character  of  their  light.  He  observed  that  it  was 
not  suffused  all  over  the  body  of  the  insect,  but  pro- 
ceeded from  "  a  small  white  part  near  the  tail,"  from 
whence  "  there  ariseth  a  flame  of  a  circular  figure  and 
emerald-green  colour."  Of  those  which  he  kept  in 
captivity,  he  notes  that,  "as  they  declined  and  the 
luminous  humour  dried,  their  light  grew  languid  and 
at  last  went  out  with  their  lives."  He  kept  spiders  in 
a  glass  with  a  toad,  in  order  to  test  the  legend  that 
these  creatures  mutually  poison  each  other.  But  there 
was  no  poisoning.  What  happened  was  that  the  spiders 
ran  about  over  the  body  of  the  toad  and  sat  upon  its 
head.  At  last,  "  upon  advantage,"  he  swallowed  seven 
of  them,  and  afterwards  dined  heartily  on  bees,  in 
neither  case  suffering  from  any  inconvenience.  In  the 
course  of  an  examination  of  vulgar  errors  about  grass- 
hoppers, Browne  examined  those  curious  masses  of 
foam  and  froth  which  country  people  call  '^  cuckoo- 
spit,"  and  made  a  close  investigation  of  the  little 
bright-green,  cicada-like  insects  which  inhabit  them 
in  a  larval  state.  The  fact  is,  that  Brown  conducted 
minute  investigations  of  this  humble  kind  far  more 
vigorously  than  he  did  examinations  of  the  huge  and 
pompous  parts  of  the  animal  creation. 

For  the  naturalist  of  the  early  seventeenth  century, 
the  series  of  recognised  heraldic  monsters  possessed  a 
dangerous  fascination.  To  deny  their  existence  was 
almost  impossible,  in  the  face  of  the  fact  that  Holy 
Scripture  seemed  to  give  a  direct  confirmation  of  it.  It 


III.]  THE    VULGAB  EBRORS  87 

required  a  very  bold  spirit  to  question  the  validity  of 
the  cockatrice,  when  the  prophet  Isaiah  had  spoken  of 
hatching  its  eggs ;  and  to  have  doubts  about  dragons, 
vp'hen  they  are  described  so  freely  in  the  Psalms  of 
David.  A  name  was  a  name;  the  suggestion  of  a  mis- 
translation was  not  very  kindly  accepted  in  circles 
which  were  accustomed  to  believe  in  the  plenary 
inspiration  of  an  English  Bible.  The  griffin  was  a 
beast  which  gave  Browne  a  great  deal  of  trouble. 
The  fore  part  of  him  was  that  of  an  eagle,  with  wings 
and  a  hooked  beak,  but  the  flanks,  hind-legs,  and  tail 
were  those  of  a  lion.  Browne  decides,  on  the  whole, 
that  the  idea  of  this  creature  is  symbolical,  and  that 
it  does  not  exist  in  nature.  Aldrovandi  "hath  in  a 
large  discourse  rejected ''  the  griffin,  and  this  is  a  help 
to  our  philosophic  doubter.  But  "  many  affirm,  and 
most  (I  perceive)  deny  not,"  and  the  griffin  presents  a 
great  deal  of  difficulty.  We  are  grieved  to  find  a  too- 
constant  harking  back  to  "the  testimonies  of  ancient 
writers,'^  to  sculpture,  where  the  monster  has  held  a 
splendid  sway,  and  to  poetry,  where  he  still  outspeeds 
the  Arimaspian. 

On  the  whole,  however,  and  in  face  of  all  these 
respectable  witnesses,  Browne  is  inclined  firmly  to 
repudiate  the  griffin.  He  finds  the  raw  conjunction 
of  bird  and  beast  shocking  to  his  biological  instincts, 
and  though  for  a  moment  he  is  shaken  by  the  analogy 
of  the  bat  (which  he  evidently  supposed  to  be  half- 
beast,  half-bird),  he  decides  that  in  that  case  there  is 
a  commixture  of  both  kinds  running  through  the 
species,  "  so  confirmed  and  set  together  that  he  cannot 
define  the  beginning  or  end  of  either."  It  is  the 
crudity  of  the  griffin,  as  of  two  fragments  abruptly 


88  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

cemented  together,  that  shocks  him.  So  the  wyvern, 
the  front  of  which  is  a  winged  dragon  and  the  back  a 
serpent,  affronts  nature  by  its  violence.  Browne  saw 
that  these  direct  anomalies  disturbed  the  laws  of 
nature,  but  his  arguments  were  singularly  primitive 
and  timid.  How  could  he,  who  had  prosecuted  so 
much  anatomy,  and  who  was  so  familiar  with  the 
interior  economy  of  beasts  and  birds,  not  ask  himself 
whether,  in  the  frame  of  the  griffin,  the  viscera  of  an 
eagle  could  suddenly  join  those  of  a  lion  without 
absolute  discord  and  disparity  of  instinct  ?  He  finally 
decides  that  such  creatures  as  the  wyvern  and  the 
griffin  are  symbolical  and  enigmatical,  but  he  does  not 
grip  the  fable  and  fling  it,  as  we  expect  him  to  do. 

The  phoenix  he  treats  more  bravely,  and  dismisses 
it  on  the  score  of  the  absence  of  all  ocular  testimony. 
We  learn,  accidentally,  that  he  had  never  seen  other 
than  feathers  of  the  famous  Eastern  bird  of  paradise, 
of  which  he  tells  us  that  the  janizaries  of  Constantino- 
ple made,  in  his  day,  "  their  ordinary  plume,"  just  as 
vain  and  selfish  ladies  in  ours  permit  the  egret  to 
be  destroyed  that  a  tremulous  spray  of  feathers  may 
quiver  above  their  bonnets.  Curious  legends  about 
the  salamander  are  still  familiar  to  modern  readers, 
although  few  people  now  believe  that  if  thrown  upon 
the  hearth  it  extinguishes  the  fire  like  ice,  or  that 
it  can  continue  to  live  in  flames.  More  extraordinary 
to  us  sounds  the  notion  that  out  of  the  wool  of  sala- 
manders can  be  woven  a  kind  of  cloth  which  resists 
the  action  of  fire.  To  shave  a  salamander  strikes  one 
as  the  most  hopeless  industry  to  which  a  man  could 
possibly  addict  himself,  and  even  Browne,  who  never 
smiles,  contends  that  it  must  be  "  a  fallacious  enlarge- 


III.]  THE    VULGAR  EBR0B8  89 

ment ''  which,  speaks  of  napkins  woven  from  the  wool 
of  "a  kind  of  lizard,  a  quadruped  corticated  and 
depilous."  To  the  indestructible  character  of  the  skin 
of  the  salamander,  he  objects  that  Brassavolus  got  hold 
of  one  dead,  and  did  successfully  burn  it.  Browne 
hints,  but  hesitates  to  say  in  so  many  words,  that  what 
the  ancients  called  a  salamander  was  really  a  newt  or 
water-lizard.  There  is  always  the  curious  little  lurk- 
ing trepidation  that,  in  denying  these  old  stories  of 
monsters,  the  scientific  reformer  may  be  committing 
an  act  of  impiety. 

Browne  suffered  from  the  circumstance  that  most  of 
those  who  had  preceded  him  in  description  of  the 
animal  world  had  written,  as  he  says,  poetically  or 
mystically  or  enigmatically  or  hermetically  or  rhetori- 
cally, but  not,  as  we  should  put  it  to-day,  biologically. 
They  made  no  attempt  to  interpret  structure  in  relation 
to  the  life-history  of  an  animal  or  a  class  of  animals  ; 
but  if  something  ridiculously  inept  was  reported  of  it, 
they  gave  the  report,  which  might  be  a  mere  piece 
of  heraldic  symbolism,  the  benefit  of  the  doubt. 
A  very  curious  instance  was  the  persistent  belief  in 
the  basilisk  or  cockatrice,  a  creature  which  combined 
the  peculiarities  of  a  mammal,  a  bird,  and  a  reptile. 
It  was  imagined  with  a  beast's  legs,  dragon's  wings, 
serpentine  and  winding  tail,  and  the  comb  of  a  cock. 
It  was  supposed  to  be  the  offspring  of  a  cock's  Qgg 
hatched  under  a  toad.  Browne  did  not  feel  that  he 
"could  safely  deny"  that  some  animal  of  this  kind 
might  exist,  and  he  would  doubtless  have  been  ex- 
ceedingly nonplussed  if  a  specimen  of  that  lively  little 
reptile,  the  mitred  iguana  of  Mexico,  had  been  pre- 
sented to  his  notice.     But  he  is  bold  to  deny  the  story 


90  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

of  the  eggs  hatclied  under  a  toad,  wMch.  he  styles 
"  a  conceit  as  monstrous  as  the  brood  itself/^  and  he 
very  properly  suggests  that  many  of  the  fantastic 
stories  about  basilisks  are  purely  symbolic,  or,  as  he 
puts  it,  hieroglyphical. 

What  was  the  most  preposterous  legend  about  this 
monster,  however,  is  dealt  with  by  Browne  very 
timidly.  The  ancients  believed  that  the  basilisk  could 
kill  an  enemy  from  a  distance  by  the  mere  flash  of 
light  from  its  eye-ball;  "this  venenation  shooteth 
from  the  eye."  Does  not  the  Lady  Anne  say  to 
Gloster,  when  he  praises  her  eyes,  "  Would  they  were 
basilisks  to  strike  thee  dead "  ?  Browne  found  no 
difficulty  in  believing  that  the  visible  ray  might  carry 
forth  the  subtlest  part  of  a  poison,  and  that  this  could 
not  act  unless  it  were  seen  by  the  victim.  You  might 
walk  through  a  forest,  with  basilisks  fulminating  from 
every  bough,  but  you  suffered  no  harm  at  all  from 
these  venomous  ejections,  unless  you  were  imprudent 
enough  to  meet  a  basilisk  eye  to  eye,  in  which  case 
you  departed  this  life  in  great  agony.  It  is  evident 
that  Browne's  conception  of  optics  was  still  in  its 
infancy.  It  appears  that  sailors  and  travellers  were  in 
the  habit  of  bringing  the  skins  of  basilisks  home  with 
them  from  the  tropics ;  Browne  speaks  of  these  as  "arti- 
ficial impostures,"  but  we  may  question  whether  they 
were  not  in  some  instances  the  skins  of  such  iguanoid 
saurians  as  we  have  mentioned  above.  Very  effective 
basilisks,  however,  could  be  constructed  out  of  the 
dried  bodies  of  thornback-rays,  with  their  immense 
breadth  of  fin  and  winding  snaky  tail.  Browne 
seems  to  indicate  that  he  has  exercised  his  own  in- 
genuity in  counterfeiting  such  basilisks. 


III.]  THE    VULGAB  EBB0B8  91 

In  the  fourth,  book  of  the  Vulgar  Errors,  Browne 
deals  with  many  popular  and  received  tenets  respecting 
the  human  body,  which  he  examines  or  proves  either 
false  or  dubious.  Here  his  long  practical  experience 
as  a  surgeon  helps  him.  It  seems  very  curious  that 
the  position  of  the  heart  should  be  generally  unknown 
in  the  seventeenth  century,  but  we  gather  from  Browne 
that  the  "  careless  and  inconsiderate  aspection "  of 
anatomists  had  betrayed  popular  judgment  into  be- 
lieving it  to  lie  much  more  to  the  left  side  than  it 
really  does.  Many  of  the  errors  which  he  exposes  are 
of  a  superstitious  kind,  as  that  drowned  men's  bodies 
rise  on  the  ninth  day,  and  that  sneezing  has  a  ritual 
significance.  These  ideas  have  long  ceased  to  be  held 
by  such  readers  as  Browne  addressed,  although  some 
of  them  still  find  currency  with  the  unthinking.  What 
Browne  says  about  Jews  is  extraordinarily  rude,  and 
his  Hebrew  readers,  if  he  had  any,  must  have  com- 
plained that  it  was  more  painful  to  be  defended  by 
such  an  advocate  than  to  be  left  to  the  casual  obloquy 
of  the  vulgar.  He  does  not  absolutely  deny  that  there 
may  be  a  race  of  pigmies  somewhere,  but  he  cannot 
believe  that  when  they  gallop  to  battle  against  cranes 
they  ride  upon  the  backs  of  partridges. 

The  fifth  book  deals  with  the  injury  which  has  been 
done  to  the  judgment  of  credulous  persons  by  the  pre- 
X-)Osterous  fancy  of  people  who  have  drawn  pictures  out 
of  their  own  heads.  Here,  no  doubt,  the  symbolical 
and  the  heraldic  elements  came  in  and  disturbed  the 
simple-minded.  There  were  the  monsters  of  Gothic 
imagination,  the  goblins  and  supporters  of  cathedrals 
and  coats  of  arms  ;  it  was  easy  for  an  irresponsible  illus- 
trator to  copy  a  gargoyle  and  say  that  he  had  drawn 


92  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

it  from  the  life  in  some  sequestered  valley  of  Arabia. 
There  were  certain  zoological  types  of  fallacy,  of  which 
the  pelican  in  her  piety,  opening  her  breast  that  she 
might  feed  her  young  ones  with  her  blood,  was  a  pro- 
minent example.  Browne,  who  was  familiar  with  real 
pelicans,  was  able  to  correct  the  picture-makers.  He 
gives  a  full  and  accurate  description  of  this  remarkable 
bird,  which  the  illustrators  painted  green  or  yellow 
instead  of  white,  and  with  a  short  bill,  instead  of  with 
the  long  mandible,  carrying  a  capacious  bag  attached, 
which  is  so  familiar  in  our  aviaries.  Browne  was  no 
less  indignant  at  the  conventional  pictures  of  the 
dolphin,  which  in  his  day  represented  that  cetacean 
"  convexedly  crooked  "  or  else  "  concavously  inverted," 
clasped  around  an  anchor  or  writhing  to  dislocation  in 
the  ecstasy  of  carrying  Arion. 

It  does  not  seem,  however,  from  the  observations 
which  he  makes  in  the  course  of  the  Vulgar  Errors  that 
Browne  had  formed  any  true  conceptions  of  a  zoological 
character.  In  this  he  was  not  before  his  time.  The 
anatomical  and  physiological  character  of  the  medical 
studies  he  had  pursued  at  Padua  had  quickened  his 
curiosity  in  natural  objects,  and  had  encouraged  in  him 
the  temper  of  inquiry.  But  at  the  moment  in  which 
Browne  lived,  the  phenomena  of  animal  life,  whether 
of  form  or  function,  were  still  unexplained  by  the  laws 
of  physics  and  of  chemistry,  and  it  is  this  absence  of 
explanation  which  makes  itself  felt  in  all  the  vague 
opinions  of  the  Vulgar  Errors.  It  is  particularly  to 
be  remembered  that  the  microscope  had  not  yet  been 
brought  to  the  aid  of  anatomical  research;  when 
Browne's  book  saw  the  light,  Anton  van  Leeuwenhoek 
was  but  a  boy  of  seventeen.    The  physician  of  Norwich 


III.]  THE   VULGAR  ERB0B8  93 

lived,  as  I  have  said,  on  the  very  frontier  of  the 
promised  land,  but  he  never  crossed  it.  We  may  take 
as  an  example  the  chapter  "  Of  Lampries."  The  error 
vi^hich  he  contends  against  here  is  that  the  lamprey 
has  seven  (Browne,  like  the  German  language,  says 
nine)  eyes  on  each  side  behind  its  head.  Browne 
saw  that  "  it  were  a  superfluous  inartificial  act  to 
place  and  settle  so  many  in  one  place."  In  point 
of  fact  he  came  very  near  to  the  truth,  which  is 
that  these  cavities  form  a  row  of  bronchial  openings, 
through  which  water  is  permitted  to  permeate  the 
gills.  He  had  seen  the  lamprey  spurt  water  through 
"  a  fistula  or  pipe  at  the  back  part  of  the  head  "  ;  he 
observed,  but  it  was  with  an  uncertain  and  unaided 
vision.  In  the  same  way,  he  discourses  of  the  eyes  of 
snails,  and  here  he  speaks  of  information  said  to  have 
been  gained  by  others  with  the  "  help  of  exquisite 
glasses,"  which  he  has,  it  is  evident,  not  obtained. 
Inability  to  take  advantage  of  the  microscope  is 
plainly  responsible  for  the  main  part  of  Browne's 
imperfections. 

It  is  proper,  therefore,  that  we  should  not  be  led 
away  by  our  affection  for  Browne,  and  by  his  charming 
way  of  saying  things,  to  exaggerate  the  scientific  value 
of  the  Vulgar  Errors.  That  value  seems  to  be  small. 
There  is  something  very  entertaining  in  the  repetition 
of  monstrous  tales  about  animals,  and  plants,  and 
minerals  ;  but  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  think  that 
these  tales,  or  even  their  refutation,  influenced  the 
course  of  knowledge.  Professor  Kay  Lankester  says  — 
and  his  words  may  be  directly  applied  to  such  writers 
as  Browne  —  "whilst  the  theories  and  fables  which 
were  current  in  earlier  times  in  regard  to  animal  life 


94  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

and  the  various  kinds  of  animals  form  an  important 
subject  of  study  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  develop- 
ment of  the  human  mind,  they  really  have  no  bearing 
upon  the  history  of  scientific  zoology."  Browne,  for 
whom  the  very  conception  of  what  we  call  zoology  had 
not  separated  itself  from  a  general  "physiology,"  or 
vague,  unrelated  curiosity  concerning  the  phenomena 
of  nature,  is  interesting  as  a  writer,  even  as  a  moralist, 
but  not  as  a  pioneer  in  science.  He  is  not  one  of  those 
who,  from  Edward  Wotton  to  E-ay,  down  a  century  of 
ardent  endeavour,  drew  the  veil  more  and  more  com- 
pletely away  from  the  mysteries  of  animal  life.  With 
all  his  pleasant  energy,  with  all  his  zeal  against "  false 
representations,"  Browne  was  contented  to  preserve 
a  condition  of  mental  life  into  which  the  spirit  of  se- 
vere inquiry  had  not  yet  intruded.  It  was  to  set  in, 
a  very  few  years  later,  with  the  advent  of  the  Royal 
Society. 

The  Vulgar  Errors  is  a  work  so  discursive  that  criti- 
cism will  doubtless  do  best  to  treat  it  in  a  wholly  de- 
sultory way.  We  may  find  it  most  instructive  to  begin 
by  amusing  ourselves  with  all  its  odd  digressions,  specu- 
lation of  what  maggots  naturally  signify,  of  the  causes 
of  the  long  life  of  crows,  of  whether  the  gall  of  the 
deer  is  seated  in  its  liver  or  its  guts.  We  may  like  to 
turn  the  cheerful  pages  vaguely,  and  learn  why  dogs 
can  search  out  a  Jew  in  the  dark,  and  what  "fuligin- 
ous efflorescences  and  complexional  tinctures "  cause 
the  negro  to  be  black.  But  when  we  are  satiated  with 
all  such  questions  as  these,  and  tired  of  the  ineffectual 
dogmatism  of  the  whole  book,  —  so  vain  nowadays, 
when  our  hand-books  and  our  encyclopaedias  are  ready 
to  tell  us  the  precise  facts  about  such  matters,  ^  then 


III.]  THE    VULGAB  ERE  OB 8  95 

we  shall  do  well  to  return  to  the  opening  chapters  of 
the  Vulgar  Errors^  and  see  what  was  Browne's  philo- 
sophical aim  in  composing  it.  In  the  first  place,  then, 
by  the  light  of  those  chapters  we  see  that  the  Pseudo- 
doxia  Epidemica,  to  give  it  its  pompous  title,  is  de- 
signed, in  Pater's  admirable  definition,  to  be  "  a  criti- 
cism, a  cathartic,  an  instrument  for  the  clarifying  of 
the  intellect."  To  attain  that  end  the  author  begins 
by  defining  and  accounting  for  man's  liability  to  gross 
error,  his  strange  "  deceivability  in  his  perfection." 

Browne  finds  that  all  created  beings,  yes,  even 
"  the  angels  of  light  in  all  their  clarity,"  are  naturally 
subject  to  error.  The  source  of  all  the  mistakes  of 
reported  observation  with  which  he  proposes  to  deal 
is  this  fallible  nature  of  man,  for  which  he  accounts  by 
supposing  that  there  exists  in  us  all  an  inborn  ten- 
dency to  see  things  and  to  remember  things  as  they 
are  not,  an  erroneous  inclination  of  the  mind.  He  has 
been  very  much  impressed,  in  the  course  of  his  medical 
experience,  by  the  fact  that  most  persons,  when  brought 
face  to  face  with  the  truth,  are  unable  to  appreciate  it. 
They  look  at  a  badger,  and  simply  because  they  have 
formed  a  preconceived  impression  that  its  legs  are 
shorter  on  one  side  than  on  the  other,  they  think  that 
what  they  see  before  them  confirms  them  in  their 
belief.  They  are  "  bad  discoverers  of  verity,"  because 
they  do  not  allow  their  senses  to  have  full  sway,  but 
are  drawn  aside,  as  by  a  set  of  malignant  magnets,  by 
the  "perverted  apprehensions  and  conceptions  of  the 
world."  We  may  allow  Browne  to  dilate  at  some 
length  on  this  view  of  the  causes  of  error,  since  it 
contains  the  central  idea  round  which  the  loose  texture 
of  the  Vulgar  Errors  is  woven.     He  has  been  speaking 


96  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

of  those  who  cannot  see  a  natural  truth  when  it  lies 
patent  before  their  vision  :  — 

"Moreover,  their  understanding,  thus  weak  in  itself,  and 
perverted  by  sensible  delusions,  is  yet  further  impaired  by  the 
dominion  of  their  appetite  ;  that  is,  the  irrational  and  brutal 
part  of  the  soul,  which,  lording  it  over  the  sovereign  faculty, 
interrupts  the  actions  of  that  noble  part,  and  chokes  those 
tender  sparks  which  Adam  hath  left  them  of  reason.  And 
therefore  they  do  not  only  swarm  with  errors,  but  vices  de- 
pending thereon.  Thus  they  commonly  affect  no  man  any 
further  than  he  deserts  his  reason,  or  complies  with  their 
aberrancies.  Hence  they  embrace  not  virtue  for  itself,  but 
its  reward ;  and  the  argument  from  pleasure  or  utility  is  far 
more  powerful  than  that  from  virtuous  honesty,  which  Ma- 
homet and  his  contrivers  well  understood,  when  he  set  out 
the  felicity  of  his  heaven,  by  the  contentments  of  flesh,  and  the 
delights  of  sense,  slightly  passing  over  the  accomplishment 
of  the  soul,  and  the  beatitude  of  that  part  which  earth  and  visi- 
bilities too  weakly  affect.  But  the  wisdom  of  our  Saviour  and 
the  simplicity  of  his  truth  proceeded  another  way,  defying  the 
popular  provisions  of  happiness  from  sensible  expectations, 
placing  his  felicity  in  things  removed  from  sense,  and  the 
intellectual  enjoyment  of  God.  And  therefore  the  doctrine 
of  the  one  was  never  afraid  of  universities,  or  endeavoured  the 
banishment  of  learning,  like  the  other.  And  though  Galen 
doth  sometimes  nibble  at  Moses  .  .  .  yet  is  there  surely  no 
reasonable  Pagan  that  will  not  admire  the  rational  and  well- 
grounded  precepts  of  Christ." 

The  subjugation  of  the  writer's  will  to  the  precepts 
of  revealed  religion  is  hardly  less  manifest  here  than 
it  was  in  each  alternate  page  of  Eeligio  Medici.  In 
later  chapters,  Browne  expands  his  view  in  the  winding 
way  that  he  alwa,ys  prefers  to  adopt,  but  he  goes  no 
further  in  scepticism  than  to  suggest  that  holy  writers 
have  used  expressions  which  were  fitted  rather  to  the 
apprehension  of  their  readers  than  to  positive  veracity 


III.]  THE   VULGAB  EBB  OB S  97 

or  tlie  exact  nature  of  things.  Some  of  the  examples 
he  quotes  are  of  a  trivial  nature,  as  when  he  reminds 
us  that  Solomon's  molten  sea  was  said  to  be  three 
times  its  diameter  in  circumference,  whereas  it  ought 
to  have  been  a  fraction  more.  But  he  finds  a  better 
instance  when  he  points  out  that  the  sun  and  the 
moon  are  termed  the  two  great  lights  of  heaven, 
although  the  moon  is  now  known  to  be  an  almost 
insignificant  satellite.  Here  Scripture  "  omitteth  the 
exact  account "  of  the  phenomena,  "  describing  them 
rather  to  our  apprehensions."  But,  of  course,  there  is 
no  such  thing  as  an  absolute  conception  of  truth,  and 
Browne  is  illogical,  or  not  quite  sincere,  when  he  puts 
the  describing  of  the  moon  as  a  great  light  —  which  in 
our  hemisphere  it  unquestionably  is  —  on  a  level  with 
the  statement  that  the  wearing  of  an  amethyst  will 
prevent  a  man  from  getting  drunk,  which  is  true  in 
no  age  or  climate. 

If,  however,  Browne  did  not  quite  perceive  that 
truth  is  an  ideal  which  cannot  be  realised,  and  ob- 
scured his  own  sense  of  symbolical  or  relative  truth 
by  seeking  after  positive  formulas,  at  least  he  saw 
the  value  of  negation.  It  is  a  very  great  matter,  in 
dealing  with  a  mass  of  spurious  statement,  to  be  able 
boldly  to  deny  the  fact.  This  Browne  did,  often  with 
a  great  deal  of  courage,  and  he  ought  to  have  this 
credit.  This  is,  indeed,  the  answer  to  those  who 
say  that  he  himself  made  as  many  mistakes  as  his 
forerunners.  He  did  not  make  so  many;  and  those 
he  did  make  were  new,  and  therefore  transient,  with 
no  dangerous  tradition  behind  them.  The  great  merit 
of  the  Vulgar  Errors,  as  a  contribution  to  contem- 
porary thought,  was  that  it  took  a  long  series   of 


98  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

pragmatical  assertions  about  phenomena,  and  showed 
that  they  broke  down  in  face  of  experience.  Like 
Cardan,  learned  men  had  "taken  some  things  upon 
trust,  and  although  they  examined  some,  they  had 
let  slip  many  others."  The  ancient  writers,  Browne 
still  thought,  were  "  of  singular  use  unto  a  prudent 
reader,"  but  he  faced  the  necessity  of  asserting,  with 
more  or  less  firmness  as  his  courage  rose  or  fell,  that 
in  a  great  many  specific  instances,  these  ancients,  with 
all  their  parade  of  depth  and  latitude  of  learning,  were, 
on  demonstration,  wrong. 

In  his  famous  History  of  Civilisation  (1857),  Buckle 
started  a  theory  regarding  the  development  of  scep- 
ticism in  the  seventeenth  century,  which  he  illustrated 
mainly  by  the  example  of  Browne.  Buckle's  idea  was 
that  we  may  trace  an  extraordinary  step  forward  in 
the  emancipation  of  the  human  mind  by  comparing 
the  Vulgar  Errors  with  Religio  Medici.  In  the  lat- 
ter. Buckle  thought  that  he  found  evidence  of  an 
almost  mediaeval  credulity;  the  author  of  it  was  still 
bound  hand  and  foot  to  tradition,  and  gloried  in 
asserting  the  perfect  humility  of  his  faith.  H6  was  a 
complete  instance  of  that  ''  superiority  over,  or  neglect 
of  inquiry,"  which  the  new  science  was  to  reprove  and 
awaken.  In  the  Vulgar  Errors,  although  published  but 
six  years  later,  Buckle  finds  an  entirely  different 
temper  of  intellect.  "  But  for  the  most  decisive  evi- 
dence," he  says,  "we  could  hardly  believe  it  to  be 
written  by  the  same  man  "  who  wrote  Religio  Medici. 
On  this  theme  the  historian  of  civilisation  builds 
quite  an  imposing  critical  structure.  He  believes  that 
in  those  few  years  Browne  had  changed  his  whole 
character,  and  had  adopted  an  attitude  to  science  and 


"!•]  THE   VULGAB  EBB  OB 8  99 

religion,  the  tone  "  of  which  is  inconsistent  with  the 
old  theological  spirit."  Browne  is  now  as  eager  to 
expose  the  blunders  of  the  Fathers  as  he  was  before 
insistent  in  bowing  down  to  them  and  accepting  them. 
Buckle  attributes  it  to  the  effect  of  the  Revolution 
and  the  Civil  War  upon  a  mind  of  great  ductility, 
which  had  suddenly  become  awakened  to  the  fact 
that  religion  was  trading  upon  the  credulity  of 
man. 

This  plausible  and  interesting  theory,  however,  is 
one  which  breaks  down,  like  some  fable  of  Oppian  or 
Albertus  Magnus,  before  a  close  examination  of  the 
books  themselves.  It  is,  perhaps,  not  unkind  to  sur- 
mise that  Buckle  read  his  Vulgar  Errors  rather 
eclectically  than  exhaustively.  He  read,  seeking  for 
confirmation  of  a  theory  he  had  already  formed.  The 
sinuous  methods  of  Browne  are  particularly  capable 
of  betraying  such  a  student ;  for,  indeed,  by  quoting  a 
passage  from  any  one  of  his  books  without  reference 
to  the  context,  it  would  be  easy  to  surmise  that  he 
must  have  been  an  atheist  and  a  fanatic,  an  eager 
seeker  into  truth,  and  a  superstitious  ignoramus.  He 
pursues  his  leisurely  and  winding  way,  and  we  must 
always  read  enough  of  him  to  ensure  perception  of 
the  long  trend  of  his  argument.  If  we  do  this,  I  do 
not  think  we  shall  arrive  at  the  conclusion  that  the 
author  of  Religio  Medici  differed  in  anything  essential 
from  the  author  of  the  Vulgar  Errors.  In  each  book 
Browne  shows  himself  the  same,  a  man  of  piety  who 
did  not  wish  his  faith  to  be  obscured  by  unnecessary 
and  slavish  excesses  of  credulity;  who  felt  to  the 
inmost  fibre  of  his  being  the  mystery  and  the 
solemnity  of  life,  but  did  not  choose  in  its  contempla- 


100  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

tion  to  lose  Ms  self-control ;  a  man  who  dreaded 
exaggeration  and  emphasis,  who  loved  a  moderate 
liberty  of  mental  action,  and  who  wished  to  be  master 
of  his  own  soul  without  oppressing  or  offending  his 
neighbour. 

The  Pseudodoxia  Epidemica  was  well  received,  al- 
though with  little  of  the  cosmopolitan  enthusiasm 
which  had  greeted  Religio  Medici.  Alexander  Ross 
came  forward  again  to  the  attack,  with  an  Arcana 
Microcosmi  (1652),  in  which  he  tried  to  put  some  of 
the  old  monsters,  which  Browne  had  turned  out,  back 
into  their  places ;  but  Ross  was  growing  elderly  and 
stupid,  and  his  old-fashioned  pamphlet  passed  almost 
unobserved.  A  like  fate  befell  the  animadversions 
contained  in  the  Eudoxa  (1656)  of  John  Robinson, 
another  bolt  shot  out  of  the  old  camp,  which  was  little 
noticed  in  its  original  Latin  form,  and  still  less  in  its 
English  version  of  1658.  Those  who  are  inclined  to 
smile  at  Browne's  occasional  and  partial  credulity 
should  glance  at  the  gross  pages  of  Ross  and  Robinson ; 
Browne  will  appear  to  them,  by  contrast,  to  have  been 
an  angel  of  scientific  light.  James  Windet,  a  young 
physician  settled  in  Yarmouth,  seems  to  have  been  a 
disciple  of  Browne's  and  to  have  formed  the  design  of 
producing  a  panegyric  on  the  Vulgar  Errors.  Windet's 
letters  to  Browne  have  never  been  published,  but  they 
passed  through  the  hands  of  Simon  Wilkin,  who  has 
described  them  as  ^^most  tedious  and  pedantick, — 
written  in  Latin,  profusely  ornamented  with  Greek 
and  even  Arabick,  but  utterly  destitute  of  interest." 
No  gold  dust  there,  it  is  evident,  for  the  impoverished 
biographer  of  Browne,  nor  any  sparkle  of  it  in  the  five 
letters   preserved  among  the  Robinson    Manuscripts 


III.]  THE    VULGAR  EBROBS  101 

from  one  Isaac  Gruter/  dated  between  1650  and  1675, 
and  dealing  languidly  with  a  proposal  that  the  writer 
should  translate  the  Vulgar  Errors  into  Latin;  this 
project  it  does  not  appear  that  he  ever  carried  out. 
All  that  these  desultory  facts  give  u.s  is  evidence  of 
the  position  of  Browne  in  the  literary  world,  and  the 
respect  which  his  accomplishments  awakened. 

The  popular  success  of  the  Vulgar  Errors  exposed  its 
author  to  a  curious  annoyance.  In  1657  a  London 
publisher,  Edward  Farnham,  was  impertinent  enough 
to  issue  a  book  called  Nature's  Cabinet  Unlocked,  which 
he  attributed  on  the  title-page  to  "  Tho.  Brown  D.  of 
Physick."  That  this  was  a  deliberate  fraud,  and  not 
an  accident  or  a  similarity  of  name,  is  proved  by  the 
preface,  in  the  course  of  which  certain  published 
phrases  of  our  author  are  woven  into  the  text,  while  at 
the  foot  are  printed,  in  large  letters  like  a  signature, 
the  words  "Eeligio  Medici."  Browne  was  so  much 
annoyed  that,  in  issuing  a  protest  in  1658,  he  said 
that  since  "either  he  must  write  himself,  or  others 
will  write  for  him,"  he  "knew  no  better  prevention 
than  to  act  his  own  part  with  less  intermission  of  his 
pen,"  and  it  seems  therefore  that  we  owe  to  the  forgery 
of  Nature's  Cabinet  Unlocked  the  publication  of  those 
precious  works  which  will  occupy  us  in  the  following 
chapter.  The  scandalous  little  production  itself  is  an 
elementary  treatise  of  "  physiology,"  in  the  seventeenth 
century  sense,  a  handbook  to  miscellaneous  knowledge 
about  gems  and  plants,  spirits  and  metals,  and  all 
kinds  of  animate  and  inanimate  bodies. 

1  Isaac  Gruter  was  probably  one  of  the  "  three  or  four  sons, 
who  were  all  scholars,"  of  the  eccentric  and  perambulatory 
Dutch  physician,  Pieter  Gruter  of  Dixmuid,  who  died  in  1634. 


CHAPTER  ly 

UBN-BUBIAL  AND   THE  GABDEN  OF  CYBUS 

(1658) 

The  absence  of  almost  all  allusion  to  the  Civil  War  in 
the  writings  and  correspondence  of  Thomas  Browne  is 
an  instance  of  what  has  often  been  commented  upon, 
the  narrowly  localised  effect  of  great  political  struggles 
in  the  seventeenth  century.  Browne  lived  in  the  city 
of  JSTorwich  from  a  time  long  before  the  breaking  out 
of  the  war  until  a  time  when  the  war  had  become 
almost  forgotten,  and  nothing  in  his  works  would  lead 
us  to  suppose  that  he  ever  had  any  personal  cogni- 
sance of  it.  Norfolk  was  an  eminently  Puritan  county, 
and  tainted  both  with  indifferentism  and  with  hostility 
to  the  Establishment.  In  the  year  when  Browne  took 
up  his  abode  in  Norwich,  it  was  reported  to  Laud  that 
"  the  cathedral  church  is  much  out  of  order  ;  the  hang- 
ings of  the  choir  are  naught,  the  pavement  not  good, 
the  spire  of  the  steeple  is  quite  down,  the  churchyard 
is  very  ill  kept."  There  was  a  general  coolness  about 
conformity,  and  when  the  outbreak  came,  Norfolk 
accepted  the  change  of  government  very  complacently. 
Norwich  was  fortified  in  the  Cromwellian  interest,  and 
presently  settled  down  to  its  affairs  with  an  easy 
negligence  of  national  ambitions. 

102 


CH.  IV.  1    UBN-BUBIAL  AND  GABDEN  OF  CYBUS  103 

Browne  was  a  staunch,  royalist  by  conviction  all  his 
life,  but  curiously  enough  the  only  act  by  which  we 
know  that  he  displayed  his  opinions  was  a  passive  one, 
which  exposed  him  to  no  inconvenience.  When  the 
king's  army  took  Newcastle  in  the  summer  of  1642, 
the  blow  seemed  serious  to  the  Parliament,  and  after  a 
while  a  fund  was  raised  to  try  to  regain  this  fortress. 
Browne  was  one  of  some  four  hundred  citizens  of 
Norwich  who,  on  being  invited  to  contribute  for  this 
purpose,  begged  to  decline  their  mite.  As  a  royalist, 
he  could  really  do  no  less,  but  this  is  the  boldest 
stroke  for  his  king  that  our  ardent  royalist  is  known 
to  have  made.  It  is  highly  probable,  however,  that 
his  private  action,  if  not  heroic,  was  extremely  useful 
to  the  cause.  The  royalists  of  Norfolk,  at  first  in  a 
hopeless  minority,  strengthened  one  another  by  private 
advices,  and  confidentially  added  so  many  adherents 
to  their  number,  that  at  the  Eestoration  no  county  in 
England  welcomed  the  king  with  greater  ardour. 
Browne's  practice  lay  among  the  best  county  families, 
the  Bacons,  the  L'Estranges,  the  Fastens,  and  their 
fellows;  and  he  would  have  many  opportunities  of 
fortifying  his  patients  in  their  faith  and  encouraging 
them,  with  his  unfailing  optimism,  to  look  forward  to 
a  good  time  coming. 

Optimism  was  sometimes  needful,  especially  in 
1648,  when  a  wild  blast  of  political  hysteria  blew 
through  Norwich,  culminating  in  what  always  re- 
mained an  incident  as  mysterious  as  dreadful,  when  in 
the  midst  of  a  riot  the  Committee  House  was  blown 
up  and  more  than  one  hundred  persons  killed,  acci- 
dentally, as  was  alleged.  In  this  same  year  two 
women  were  put  to  death  for  witchcraft  in  Norwich ; 


104  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

one  hopes  our  medicus  was  not  responsible  for  that. 
This  was  the  darkest  time  of  the  unfortunate  city, 
which  fell  into  great  destitution,  and  in  1649,  on  the 
plea  of  great  loss  and  decay  of  trade,  and  general 
poverty  of  all  classes,  made  a  pitiful  appeal  to  Parlia- 
ment to  abate  the  taxes. 

As  the  years  rolled  on,  almost  noiselessly,  we  fancy, 
over  the  heads  of  the  serene  and  affectionate  family  in 
ISTorwich,  the  doctor  himself  insensibly  grew  to  be  a 
great  figure  in  the  town.  At  all  events,  he  became  a 
figure  which  persons  with  scientific  and  literary  tastes, 
gazing  at  Norwich  from  a  distance,  saw  rising  higher 
and  higher  above  those  of  the  other  citizens.  He 
became  an  object  of  worship  to  young  disciples  and 
remote  admirers.  We  know  that  he  was  not  facetious 
nor  a  merry  companion ;  his  talk  was  grave,  perhaps 
continuous ;  we  form  an  image  of  him  as  peripatetic 
in  the  cathedral  close,  with  one,  or  at  most  two,  serious 
young  men,  walking  at  his  side  and  listening  to  his 
flow  of  conversation.  We  know,  too,  that  he  had  a 
rare  genius  for  friendship,  and  it  displayed  itself  in  a 
warm  and  tender  sympathy  for  those  younger  than 
himself.  "I  love  my  friend,"  he  wrote,  "before 
myself,  and  yet  methinks  I  do  not  love  him  enough. 
Some  few  months  hence  my  multiplied  affection  will 
make  me  believe  I  have  not  loved  him  at  all."  This 
comes  out  in  the  fragments  of  his  correspondence. 
A  young  disciple  comes  to  stay  with  him  in  Norwich, 
and  departs  laden  with  good  things  of  the  spirit, 
stimulated,  strengthened,  uplifted.  But  Browne  broods 
over  the  memory  of  his  visit,  and  thinks  he  has  not 
done  enough  for  his  friend,  and  writes  a  solemn 
buckram  letter  of   still  further  advice  and  help,  in 


IV.]     UBN-BUBIAL  AND    GABDEN  OF  CYBUS      105 

which  we  daily  see  the  yearning  affection,  the  belief 
that  "  I  have  not  loved  him  at  all,"  under  the  senten- 
tious language. 

They  rewarded  him  with  adoration,  these  children 
of  his  spirit.  They  sunned  themselves  in  the  warmth 
of  his  "  sublime  solid  fancy."  His  books  were  carried 
about  under  their  cloaks,  with  a  little  confidential 
pressure  of  the  arm  against  the  body,  as  though  to  say 
"there  he  is."  One  of  the  disciples,  writing  from  a 
distance,  tells  Browne  that  he  "  hugs  your  Minerva  to 
his  bosom,  and  votes  it  his  vade  meciimJ'  The  young 
men  found  in  his  talk  "  more  varieties  and  delights 
than  all  the  folios  and  book-follies  of  the  time  could 
afford"  them.  His  advice  was  grave  and  magisterial. 
He  told  them,  as  he  told  Henry  Power,  to  lay  their 
foundation  in  anatomy,  "wherein  autopsia  must  be 
jouxjidus  Achates.'^  He  told  them,  since  almost  all  of 
them  were  physicists,  to  attend  operations  whenever 
they  could,  to  see  what  chemists  do  in  their  offieines, 
and  to  seek  with  all  their  might  to  peer  further  and 
further  into  the  mysteries  of  nature.  He  extolled 
upon  every  occasion  the  great  use  of  Greek  in  all 
branches  of  physic,  and  he  did  not  weary  of  asserting 
that  "  without  Greek  nothing  can  be  done  to  perfec- 
tion." He  preferred  Harvey's  discovery  of  the  circu- 
lation of  the  blood  far  beyond  that  of  Columbus ;  and 
saw  no  great  reason  for  exploring  new  worlds  while 
we  were  still  so  ignorant  of  the  old  world  which  lies 
about  us. 

Total  strangers  would  write  from  distant  places  to 
say  that  they  should  hold  themselves  eternally  obliged 
if  the  worthy  and  right  worshipful  doctor  would 
"  condescend  so  low  "  as  to  advise  them  about  their 


106  SIR  THOMAS   BROWNE  [chap. 

course  of  reading.  These  letters  would  sometimes  lead 
to  friendships,  for  Browne  would  be  struck  by  some 
ardour  of  intelligence,  and  would  invite  the  writer  to 
visit  him  at  Norwich.  So,  in  the  winter  of  1648, 
Henry  Power  —  a  graduate  of  Christ's  College,  who 
had  been  at  Cambridge,  working  at  science,  since 
1641,  but  who  deplored  "  such  few  helps  "  to  it  there 
—  came  over  and  lived  a  month  or  two  in  Norwich 
to  be  close  to  Browne.  Power  became,  perhaps,  the 
most  beloved  of  all  the  disciples;  the  doctor  gave 
him  a  great  deal  of  his  attention,  showed  him,  as 
Hood's  schoolboy  might  have  said,  a  viper's  fangs  and 
everything  that  could  make  him  comfortable.  He 
taught  him  "  to  simple,"  that  is  to  say,  to  botanise  in 
the  woods,  meadows,  and  fields,  and  to  such  good 
purpose  that  when  Power  went  back  to  college,  he 
simpled  at  Cambridge,  and  going  out  three  or  four 
miles  once  a  week  soon  collected  between  two  and 
three  hundred  species  of  plants.  Nothing  seems  to 
have  pleased  Browne  more  than  that  his  young  men 
should  devote  themselves  to  botany ;  he  himself  was 
always  haunted  by  memories  of  the  plant-garden  of 
Monsieur  Chicaneau  in  Montpellier,  when  the  Judas- 
tree  used  to  be  crimson  with  blossom  in  May. 

Power  introduced  to  Browne  another  scientist  of 
Christ's,  Thomas  Smith,  and  the  men  conceived  the 
daring  plan  of  inviting  the  celebrated  naturalist  to  Cam- 
bridge, and  putting  him  up  in  College.  If  he  accepted 
their  offer,  it  must  have  been  in  the  winter  of  1648-9, 
but  unhappily  no  record  of  such  an  interesting  visit 
exists.  In  1649  Power  took  a  practice  at  Halifax,  where 
his  family  seem  to  have  known  Browne  in  earlier  years. 
The  friendship  continued  till  Power's  death  in  1668  j 


IV.]     UBN-BUEIAL  AND    GABDEN  OF  CYBUS      107 

he  did  not  leave  much,  behind  him,  but  he  was  a  care- 
ful "  experimental  philosopher,"  and  is  remembered  as 
one  of  the  two  earliest  elected  fellows  of  the  Eoyal 
Society,  an  honour  never  bestowed  upon  his  master. 
Thomas  Smith  became  University  Librarian  in  1659, 
and  died  in  1661.  He  was  a  learned  and  pugnacious 
theologian,  who  disputed  publicly  in  Cambridge  against 
George  Fox  and  the  Quakers,  and  who  attacked 
Bunyan.^ 

All  the  best  people  of  the  old  society  seem  to  have 
been  Browne's  patients  at  Norwich.  He  used  to  go 
out  to  Heigham,  to  the  little  house  where  the  deposed 
bishop,  that  noble  relic  of  the  Elizabethan  age,  Joseph 
Hall  —  his  cathedral  desecrated  and  his  revenues  seques- 
trated —  spent  in  painful  obscurity  the  last  nine  years 
of  his  life.  To  soothe  and  attend  the  failing  age  of 
this  "  notorious  delinquent "  exhibited  very  plainly 
the  sentiments  of  the  physician,  and  Browne  showed 
courage  in  his  charge  of  Bishop  Hall,  who  survived 
under  his  care  until  the  29th  of  May  1656.  In  1650 
another  very  staunch  royalist,  Sir  Hamon  L'E strange  of 
Hunstanton,  met  with  the  Vulgar  Errors,  delighted  in 
it,  and  became  a  patient  and  friend  of  Browne's  till 
his  death  in  1660.  L'Estrange  was  an  ardent  old 
man  after  Browne's  own  heart ;  he  had  been  a  great 
traveller,  an  adventurer  for  the  North-West  Passage 
and  an  explorer  in  Ceylon.  In  the  very  last  year  of 
his  long  life  he  drew  up  notes,  in  expansion  of  and 
commentary  upon  the  Vulgar  Errors,  enough  to  form 
a  pamphlet  and  almost  a  volume.     Browne  attended 

1  For  particulars  regarding  Power  and  Smith,  I  have  to  thank 
the  kindness  of  my  friend  Dr.  John  Peile,  the  present  Master  of 
Christ's  College. 


108  SIR  THOMAS   BROWNE  [chap. 

the  Paston  family  also.  Sir  William  Paston,  of  Paston 
and  Castle  Rising,  was  made  high  sheriff  of  Norfolk  in 
the  year  when  the  doctor  arrived  in  Norwich ;  he 
suffered  greatly  during  the  Commonwealth.  But  it 
was  his  son  Eobert,  long  afterwards  the  first  Earl  of 
Yarmouth,  who  was  Browne's  particular  friend,  a 
young  man  of  parts  and  ambition,  who,  in  1655,  had 
just  gone  down  from  Trinity  College,  Cambridge.  He 
had  scientific  tastes  and  was  one  of  Browne's  disciples ; 
it  was  of  him  that  in  1657  Evelyn  asked  the  favour  of 
a  personal  introduction  to  the  celebrated  author  of 
JReUgio  Medici. 

One  of  Browne's  main  interests  was  the  collection  of 
antiquities,  and  in  particular  of  coins  found  in  the 
course  of  excavations.  Such  treasures  turned  up  not 
imfrequently  in  Norfolk,  and  it  became  the  delight  of 
Browne's  patients  to  gratify  him  by  making  additions 
to  his  cabinet.  In  particular  Mr.  Thomas  Wood  of 
Caistor,  "  a  person  of  civility,  industry,  and  knowledge 
in  this  way,"  himself  a  learned  antiquary,  sent  him  a 
great  number  of  rare  silver  and  copper  coins  from  a 
place  on  his  estate  called  East  Bloodyburgh  Furlong, 
to  Browne's  exceeding  delight.  Various  finds  included, 
not  merely  moneys,  but  urns,  gems,  and  bones,  and 
these  also,  though  apparently  at  first  to  a  less  extent, 
interested  Browne,  who  was  the  type  of  the  omni- 
vorous country  antiquary.  At  last,  apparently  in  the 
autumn  of  1657,  in  a  field  at  Old  Walsingham,  there 
were  turned  up  no  fewer  than  between  forty  and  fifty 
urns,  "  deposited  in  a  dry  and  sandy  soil,  not  a  yard 
deep,  nor  far  from  one  another."  These  vessels  con- 
tained human  bones  and  ashes,  as  well  as  ornaments 
of    ivory   and  brass,   and  in  one   of    them   Browne 


IV.]     UBN-BUBIAL  AND    GABDEN   OF  CYBUS      109 

discovered  a  small  object  which  he  believed  to  be  an 
opal. 

Such  finds  of  pottery  were,  as  we  have  said,  not 
uncommon  in  ISTorfolk  in  those  days.  Browne  has 
recorded  similar  discoveries  made  at  Brancaster,  at 
Thorpe,  at  Caistor,  at  Burnham.  The  science  of  the 
day  knew  not  how  to  adjust  its  impressions  of  their 
antiquity,  nor  to  what  period  to  attach  them.  Browne 
was  of  the  confident  opinion  that  they  were  all  of  Eoman 
origin,  and  he  held  this  to  be  "  no  obscure  conjecture," 
but  absolutely  proved  from  various  circumstances 
which  he  details.  He  thought  these  Walsingham  urns 
in  particular  had  formed  part  of  the  furniture  of  the 
Koman  colony  of  Brannodunum.  But  in  this  essential 
and  primary  consideration  he  was  in  error.  As  Sir 
John  Evans  has  pointed  out,  the  modern  antiquary 
has  only  to  glance  at  the  frontispiece  to  Browne's 
Urn-Burial  to  see  that  the  vessels  were  not  of  Eoman 
but  of  Saxon  origin.  We  do  not  go  to  Browne  to-day 
for  correct  antiquarian  information  —  although  some  of 
Ms  notes  about  coins  are  said  to  preserve  their  value 
—  but  as  we  should  to  the  rhapsody  of  some  great 
poet,  to  be  borne  along  on  the  wind  of  his  imaginative 
aflatus. 

Criticism  can  suggest  to  itself  few  more  fascinating, 
but  few  more  hopeless,  tasks  than  to  determine  what 
it  was  which  suddenly  inflamed  the  genius  of  Browne 
in  the  early  months  of  1658.  At  the  age  of  fifty-three, 
a  country  physician,  with  a  large  practice  in  and  around 
the  county  town,  who  for  twelve  years  had  abandoned 
the  small  ambition  he  may  have  once  felt  to  shine  in 
the  profession  of  letters,  suddenly  appears  to  us  illu- 
minated by  the  sacred  fire,  voluble  in  music  like  Pythia 


110  SIR  THOMAS  BEOWNE  [chap. 

on  Iter  tripod,  and  pouring  forth  paragraph,  after  para- 
graph of  elaborate  writing,  almost  any  one  of  which 
might  be  chosen  as  an  example  of  the  best  English 
prose  writing  of  the  seventeenth  century.  Beligio 
Medici  had  been  exquisite  in  easy  grace ;  the  Vulgar 
Errors  had  occasional  passages  of  a  picturesque  kind, 
buried  in  much  that  was  very  dull  and  uninspired; 
the  Urn-Burial  is  an  imaginative  exercise  as  audacious 
as  Lycidas,  and  almost  as  successful.  That  nothing 
should  have  led  up  to  it,  that  (at  all  events)  between 
1635  and  1658  there  should  have  been  no  hint  or 
murmur  of  the  hidden  music,  this  is  extraordinary 
indeed.  It  is  as  though  a  brown  bird  should  keep 
silent  in  a  cage  until  every  one  had  forgotten  its 
existence,  and  then  suddenly  fill  the  darkness  with 
its  harmony,  and  prove  to  be  a  nightingale. 

So  far  as  we  can  see,  it  was  that  supposed  opal  in 
the  urn  from  Walsingham  which  touched  the  spring 
in  Browne's  brain.  His  fancy  took  hold  of  this  little 
dim  jewel,  if  jewel  indeed  it  was,  come  to  light  again 
among  the  dust  after  so  many  centuries.  He  flew  to 
the  conviction  that  it  was  the  symbol  of  some  far-away 
romance :  first  he  persuaded  himself  that  it  had  been 
burned  upon  the  finger  of  the  dead ;  next,  that  at  the 
last  moment  of  farewell,  in  an  agony  of  regret,  some  affec- 
tionate friend  had  flung  it  into  the  flames  as  a  memorial. 
It  appears  to  me  that  the  gorgeous  texture  of  the  Urn- 
Burial  was  all  woven  around  this  opal,  that  the  rare 
dreams  and  singular  fancies  pass  and  return  that  they 
may  form  a  silken  net  for  this  questionable  object, 
which  lies  at  last  hidden  in  their  golden  tissue,  like  the 
chrysalis  of  the  silkworm  in  its  elastic  and  glittering 
fleece.     The  only  way  in  which  we  can  explain  the 


IV.]      UBN-BUBIAL  AND    GARDEN  OF  CYBUS      111 

existence  of  Urn-Burial,  one  of  the  most  curious  and 
unaccountable  of  books,  is  to  suppose  that  this  or  some 
similar  incident  inflamed  the  slumbering  genius  of  its 
author.  This  alone  accounts  for  the  high  note  of 
imaginative  excitement,  the  uplifted  ecstasy,  which 
inspires  the  strange  treatise  from  the  first  page  to 
the  last. 

This  note  of  sombre  passion  is  sounded  fully  in  the 
letter  which  the  author  addressed  on  the  1st  of  May 
1658  to  Thomas  Le  G-ros  of  Crostwick,  on  whose  estate 
important  cinerary  discoveries  had  been  made.  Browne 
was  fascinated  by  the  echo  made  in  the  depths  of  his 
soul  by  these  ^^  sad  and  sepulchral  pitchers,  which  have 
no  joyful  voices."  Most  men  have  at  one  time  or 
another  been  conscious  of  the  sentiment  which  environs 
prehistoric  vessels  drawn  out  of  the  damp  earth,  black 
and  smooth  with  age,  dully  sounding  as  if  grown  dumb 
in  that  long  sequestration.  They  stand  before  us  — 
and  we  are  now  speaking,  as  Browne  was  speaking,  not 
of  painted  and  sonorous  urns  enclosed  for  kings  in  the 
vain  and  idle  dignity  of  some  majestic  mausoleum,  but 
of  the  rustic  cups  and  bowls  of  country  service  —  these 
stand  before  us  as  humble  ministers  of  a  race  long 
buried  and  forgotten.  They  are  messengers  from  the 
past,  but  too  weak  and  frail  to  transmit  to  us  an 
intelligible  record.  There  they  are,  humid  with  the 
cold,  soft  earth  about  them,  and  they  come  direct  from 
the  hands  and  lips  of  those  who  were  our  ancestors. 
Some  furtive  phantom  seems  to  escape  from  the  pale 
clay,  but  it  is  voiceless  and  it  has  vanished  before  we 
could  challenge  it.  The  dim  life  in  it,  so  long  arrested 
in  its  subterranean  prison,  has  given  one  flutter,  one 
pulsation,  and  it  is  dispersed  for  ever. 


112  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

Browne's  whole  interest  in  these  brown  pots  centred 
around  their  human  associations.  There  was  always 
present  with  him  the  idea  that  the  little  urns  had  con- 
tained, might  yet  contain,  bones  of  men,  the  calcined 
remnants  of  those  who  had  once  walked  in  the  Norfolk 
fields.  These  dim  receptacles  had  served  as  exiguous 
dwelling-places  for  the  disembodied  soul,  shelters 
against  the  vast  continuity  of  nothingness.  So  long 
as  they  existed,  something  of  the  individual  remained 
intact;  not  merely  untroubled  but,  in  some  half -con- 
scious way,  satisfied  and  almost  happy,  in  a  dim  trance 
of  contentment.  When  a  black  urn  was  dug  up  and 
opened,  returning,  so  unwillingly,  to  the  importunate 
noises  of  the  world,  some  pathetic  essence,  some  sort 
of  diluted  soul,  sighed  itself  forth  upon  the  air,  and 
died  at  last.  Those  who  so  sheltered  and  concealed 
their  beloved,  anticipated  no  such  outrage  upon  their 
repose :  — 

"  When  the  funeral  pyre  was  out,  and  the  last  valediction 
over,  men  took  a  lasting  adieu  of  their  interred  friends,  little 
expecting  the  curiosity  of  future  ages  should  comment  upon 
their  ashes ;  and,  having  no  old  experience  of  the  duration  of 
their  relics,  held  no  opinion  of  such  af  ter-considerdtions.  But 
who  knows  the  fate  of  his  bones,  or  how  often  he  is  to  be 
bm'ied  ?  Who  hath  the  oracle  of  his  ashes,  or  whither  they 
are  to  be  scattered  ?  " 

This  is  the  temper  in  which  the  treatise  called 
Hydriotaphia :  Ur?i-52ma?  is  composed.  The  jewelled, 
slow-moving  sentences  proceed  with  an  impression  of 
extraordinary  gorgeousness  and  pomp,  heavy  and 
almost  bowed  down  under  their  trappings  of  ornament. 
The  problem  in  Browne's  mind  was  to  decide  what 
virtue  yet  sleeps  in  those  aged  cinders.     As  this  fan- 


IV.]     UBN-BUBIAL  AND   GAB  DEN  OF  CYBUS      113 

tastic  idea  revolved  in  his  mind,  it  took  wonderful 
shapes  of  mystery  and  music ;  it  branched  to  heaven, 
it  pushed  down  into  hell.  The  pretence  of  antiquarian 
research,  of  supplying  definite  fact  regarding  the  par- 
ticular vessels  dug  up  at  Old  Walsingham,  became 
slight  indeed.  One  can  imagine  the  profound  dissatis- 
faction with  which  a  prosaic  reader,  anxious  to  obtain 
information  of  a  sociological  character,  and  quite  in- 
different to  the  graces  of  Browne's  style,  would  turn 
the  pages  of  the  Urn-Burial.  Here  is  applicable  the 
immortal  simile  of  Shelley,  since  to  go  to  Browne's 
book  for  plain  archaeological  statement  would  indeed 
be  like  applying  to  a  gin-shop  for  a  shoulder  of  mutton. 
In  the  highly  inflammable  state  of  Browne's  imagina- 
tion, a  phrase  or  epithet  is  sufficient  to  start  him  off, 
and  he  blazes  in  a  spurt  of  odorous  language,  like  a 
pine-knot  touched  by  a  lighted  match.  The  following 
paragraph,  as  well  as,  but  no  better  than,  a  dozen 
others,  may  serve  to  exemplify  the  quite  extraordinary 
way  in  which  Browne's  fancy  goes  dreaming  on,  one 
clause  taking  flame  from  another,  and  the  whole  up- 
lifted on  the  full  colour  and  sound  of  the  words 
themselves :  — 

"  ^"0  lamps,  included  liquors,  lachrymatories,  or  tear-bottles 
attended  these  rural  urns,  either  as  sacred  unto  the  manes,  or 
passionate  expressions  of  their  surviving  friends.  While  with 
rich  flames,  and  hired  tears,  they  solemnised  their  obsequies, 
and  in  the  most  lamented  monuments  made  one  part  of  their 
inscriptions.  Some  And  sepulchral  vessels  containing  liquors, 
which  time  hath  incrassated  into  jellies.  For,  besides  these 
lachrymatories,  notable  lamps,  with  vessels  of  oils  and  aromati- 
cal  liquors,  attended  noble  ossuaries ;  and  some  yet  retaining 
a  vinosity  and  spirit  in  them,  which,  if  any  have  tasted,  they 
have  far  exceeded  the  palates  of  antiquity.     Liquors  not  to 


114  SIR  THOMAS   BROWNE  [chap. 

be  computed  hj  years  of  anmial  magistrates,  but  by  great 
conjunctions  and  the  fatal  periods  of  kingdoms.  The  draughts 
of  consulary  date  were  but  crude  unto  these,  and  Opimian 
wine  but  in  the  must  unto  them." 

The  pursuit  of  the  imaginative  chimera  could,  in  a 
trivial  way,  go  no  further.  Good  wine  improves  by 
keeping,  and  loses  its  fiery  rawness  in  maturity. 
Therefore,  if  it  is  improved  by  ten  years'  care,  what 
an  imperial  silkiness,  what  an  indescribable  gusto  of 
mellowness,  must  it  not  obtain  after  a  thousand  years  ! 
It  is  a  plain  matter  of  the  rule  of  three,  and  Browne's 
imagination  goes  off  in  one  flight  of  fancy  after  another 
about  the  ecstasy  which  those  must  enjoy  who  are 
privileged  to  taste  a  "vintage,  that  hath  been  cooled 
a  long  age  in  the  deep-delved  earth.''  The  tiresome 
little  fact  that,  after  a  very  short  time,  the  process  is 
reversed  and  the  wine  is  ruined  by  keeping,  so  that 
what  is  found  in  old  bottles  of  Falernian  is  nothing  but 
a  cake  of  acrid  resin,  is  well  within  Browne's  range  of 
observation,  but  he  flings  it  indignantly  away.  It  has 
no  place  in  the  scheme  of  his  beautiful  florid  vision  of 
a  glorified  vinosity. 

He  must  not,  however,  be  thought  of  as  habitually 
absurd.  His  reflections  are  often  as  sober  as  they  are 
charming.  For  instance,  the  whole  of  the  section  in 
which  he  treats  of  the  methods  of  ancient  sepulture  is 
not  merely  eloquent,  but  moderate  and  reasonable. 
He  speaks  in  favour  of  those  who  are  antiquaries  like 
himself.  While  others  desire  to  pierce  to  the  bowels 
of  Potosi,  and  rend  the  very  structure  of  the  earth  in 
their  pursuit  after  precious  metals,  his  friends  and  he, 
indifferent  about  wealth,  ask  no  more  than  to  be  per- 
mitted to  rake  an  inch  or  two  below  the  surface  of  th& 


IV.]     URN-BUBIAL  AND    GAB  DEN  OF  GYBUS      115 

soil.  What  they  seek  so  eagerly,  that  is  to  say,  lamj^s 
and  coins  and  tear-bottles,  lie  scarce  underneath  the 
roots  of  plants.  Indeed,  as  he  says  in  one  of  his  quick 
appeals  to  the  visual  sense,  you  may  have  to  disengage 
the  sides  of  an  urn  from  the  long  roots  of  dog's  grass, 
wreathed  about  the  bones  inside  it.  Those  that  are  in 
the  act  to  die  desire  that  the  earth  should  lie  upon 
them  lightly.  Browne  discourses  very  learnedly  of 
what  the  practices  of  the  ancients  had  been  in  the 
burial  of  their  dead,  giving  a  melodious  turn  of  his 
own  to  each  bit  of  dubious  pedantry.  He  knew  that 
burning  and  burying  had  gone  hand  in  hand  in  all 
ages,  and  he  does  not  confine  himself  to  the  Greeks 
and  Romans.  He  took  a  vivid  interest  in  ancient 
Scandinavian  history,  and  knew  something  of  the 
funeral  rites  of  the  Vikings.  He  actually  quotes 
Danish,  in  this  being  perhaps  unique  among  his  Eng- 
lish contemporaries,  and  he  displays  the  surprising 
breadth  of  his  accomplishment  by  showing  familiarity, 
not  once,  nor  twice,  with  the  Purgatorio  as  well  as  the 
Inferno  of  Dante. 

A  learned  German  had  preceded  Browne  in  the 
serious  part  of  his  inquiry.  In  1604,  Johann  Kirch- 
mann  of  Lllbeck  (1575-1643)  published  at  Hamburg 
a  Latin  work  De  Funeribus  Bomanorum,  which  enjoyed 
a  great  success,  and  in  Browne's  day  continued  to  be 
the  recognised  authority  on  the  subject.  It  is  sig- 
nijQcant  of  the  literary  rather  than  scientific  spirit  in 
which  these  archseological  themes  were  approached  in 
the  seventeenth  century,  that  the  De  Funeribus  con- 
sisted of  a  course  of  lectures  which  Kirchmann  had 
delivered  while  he  was  professor  of  poetry  at  Eostock. 
Browne  does  not  quote  Kirchmann  by  name  more  than 


116  SIE  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

two  or  three  times ;  but  it  has  been  proved  that  he 
borrowed  his  references  very  extensively  from  the 
Kostock  professor,  whose  book  had  not  been  translated 
into  English.  He  is  very  glad  to  dwell  on  all  evidences 
of  the  burning  of  the  body,  and  was  deeply  in  sym- 
pathy with  the  purifying  action  of  the  flames,  "  refining 
the  grosser  commixture  and  firing  out  the  ethereal 
particles  so  deeply  immersed  in  '^  the  earthly  tissues 
of  the  body.  It  is  evident  that  Sir  Thomas  Browne 
would  have  heartily  approved  of  the  modern  practice 
of  cremation.  He  speaks  with  the  greatest  horror  of 
the  fear  which  assails  us  of  "being  knaved  out  of 
our  graves,"  and  of  having  "  our  skulls  made  into 
dr  inking-bo  wl  s . " 

It  is  not  less  than  extraordinary  that  the  one  great 
English  author  who  has  expressed  a  definite  terror  of 
having  his  bones  tampered  with  and  his  skull  ex- 
hibited, should  be  the  one  who  has  suffered  from  that 
shocking  outrage.  In  1840,  some  workmen  who  were 
digging  a  grave  for  the  wife  of  the  incumbent  of  St. 
Peter  Mancroft,  in  Norwich,  broke  into  the  neighbour- 
ing vault  where  the  body  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne  had 
lain  since  1682,  and  called  the  sexton  to  look  at  what 
they  had  found.  The  sexton  saw  below  him  the 
skeleton  of  the  great  antiquary,  and  bending  into  the 
tomb,  seized  the  skull  and  carried  it  off.  He  offered 
it  for  sale,  and  it  was  bought  by  a  collector  over  whose 
name,  in  my  opinion,  it  is  best  to  shed  the  poppy  of 
oblivion.  This  unworthy  man,  after  amusing  himself 
with  his  sacrilegious  possession,  deposited  it  in  a 
museum  in  Norwich,  "where  it  is  still  to  be  seen." 
Mr.  Charles  Williams,  the  Norwich  surgeon  who  has 
done  so  much  for  the  bibliography  of  Browne,  stated 


IV.]     UBN-BUIilAL  AND    GABDEN  OF   CYRUS      117 

in  1897  that  the  skull  had  then  "  recently  been  claimed 
by  the  Vicar  of  St.  Peter  Mancroft,  but  unsuccess- 
fully "  !  I  have  seen  no  denial  of  this  last  statement, 
which  seems  to  imply  an  impious  vulgarity  almost 
incredible. 

Browne's  solicitude  with  regard  to  the  actual  sub- 
stance of  the  human  body,  and  of  separate  parts  of  it, 
after  death,  is  almost  grotesque.  Certain  ideas,  as  we 
get  to  perceive  as  we  become  familiar  with  his  writ- 
ings, recurred  very  constantly  to  his  thoughts.  There 
was  an  old  legend  that  King  Pyrrhus's  toe  could  not  be 
burnt,  and  references  to  this  privileged  and  immortal 
member  recur  over  and  over  in  the  works  of  Browne. 
The  incombustible  toe  has  its  paragraph  in  the  chapter 
on  the  Phoenix  in  the  Vulgar  Errors  and  is  not  over- 
looked in  that  portion  of  the  Urn-Burial  which  deals 
with  the  burning  of  corpses.  Browne  even  celebrated 
this  unlikely  theme  in  verse,  and  the  following  epigram 
occurs  among  his  posthumous  fragments :  — 

«  O  for  a  toe,  such  as  the  funeral  pyre 
Could  make  no  work  on  —  proof  'gainst  flame  and  fire ; 
Which  lay  unburnt  when  all  the  rest  burnt  out, 
Such  amianthine  toes  might  scorn  the  gout ; 
And  the  most  flaming  blast  the  gout  could  blow, 
But  prove  an  ignis  fatuus  to  that  toe." 

The  most  curious  instance  of  this  uncanny  interest  in 
the  animal  part  of  humanity  is,  however,  Browne's 
pride  in  his  discovery  of  a  substance  unknown  to 
science  before  his  day,  adipocere,  or  a  wax  of  human 
fat.  In  odd  prowlings  about  the  tombs  of  those  long 
dead  he,  in  fact,  observed  for  the  first  time  a  curious 
fawn-coloured  matter,  unctuous  and  ductile,  which  was 
the  result  of  decomposition  in  damp  places  sheltered 


118  SIR   THOMAS   BROWNE  [chap. 

from  the  air.  The  chemists  say  that  it  consists  chiefly 
of  ammonium  margarate,  with  certain  admixtures. 
At  all  events,  the  discovery  of  this  substance  was  one 
of  Browne's  most  prominent  services  to  pure  science, 
and  we  may  fancy  his  imagination  tracing  the  noble 
adipocere  of  Alexander  until  he  found  it  stopping  a 
hole  to  keep  the  wind  away.  He  would  certainly 
have  scorned  Horatio  for  holding  that  it  was  to  con- 
sider too  curiously  to  consider  so.  These  were  the 
light  sides  and  easy  reductions  of  the  great  and 
solemn  mystery  of  death. 

The  spacious  music  of  the  Urn-Burial,  from  which 
we  have  allowed  ourselves  to  turn  for  a  moment,  rises 
to  its'  height  in  the  paragraphs  of  the  fifth  chapter, 
over  which  the  reader  is  fain  to  delay,  since  here  it  is 
unquestionable  that  he  has  the  genius  of  Thomas 
Browne  revealed  to  him  in  its  fullest  splendour.  Here 
the  author  has  done  with  antiquarian  speculation,  done 
with  the  various  Italian  and  German  authorities  on 
whom  he  based  his  curious  erudite  technicality,  and  he 
turns  to  devote  himself  to  the  poetry  of  the  situation. 
He  contemplates  once  more,  and  with  a  deeper  in- 
tensity, these  poor  bones  from  Walsingham  that  have 
"  quietly  rested  under  the  drums  and  tramplings  of 
three  conquests  " ;  and  he  contrasts  the  diuturnity  of 
these  frail  remains,  which  never  sought  for  anything 
but  shelter  and  forgetfulness,  with  the  oblivion  which 
has  attended  the  bones  of  great  emperors  who  designed 
that  their  monuments  should  outlast  the  ages.  He 
wonders,  too,  in  what  conditions  those  rustics  came  to 
die ;  whether  it  was  disease  or  old  age  which  carried 
them  slowly  to  their  graves,  or  whether  they  "  died  by 
violent  hands,  and  were  thrust  into  their  urns,"  an 


IV.]     UBN-BUBIAL  AND    GABDEN  OF  CYBUS      119 

alternative  that  would,  he  thinks,  deepen  the  interest 
with  which  we  contemplate  them,  as  beings  who  de- 
scended with  the  fierce  gust  of  life  still  brilliant  in 
them,  and  not  dulled  and  quenched  by  indistinct 
decline.  All  these  and  many  other  problems  vex  him 
as  he  gazes  into  the  little  urns  of  clay,  and  he  feels 
how  bewildering  and  how  vain  it  is,  and  yet  how 
attractive  and  how  irresistible,  to  speculate  what  man- 
ner of  men  and  women  and  children  these  were,  and 
what  faint  desires  of  re-union  with  their  kind  may 
have  stirred  their  obscure  souls  :  — 

"What  song  the  Syrens  sang,  or  what  name  Achilles 
assumed  when  he  hid  himself  among  women,  though  puzzling 
questions,  are  not  beyond  all  conjecture.  What  time  the 
persons  of  these  ossuaries  entered  the  famous  nations  of  the 
dead,  and  slept  with  princes  and  counsellors,  might  admit 
a  wide  solution.  But  who  were  the  proprietaries  of  these 
bones,  or  what  bodies  these  ashes  made  up,  were  a  question 
above  antiquarism  ;  not  to  be  resolved  by  man,  nor  easily 
perhaps  by  siDirits,  except  we  consult  the  provincial  guardians 
or  tutelary  observators.  Had  they  made  as  good  provision 
for  their  names,  as  they  have  done  for  their  relics,  they  had 
not  so  grossly  erred  in  the  art  of  perpetuation.  But  to  sub- 
sist in  bones,  and  be  but  pyramidally  extant,  is  a  fallacy  in 
duration.  Vain  ashes,  which  in  the  oblivion  of  names,  per- 
sons, times,  and  sexes,  have  found  unto  themselves  a  fruitless 
continuation,  and  only  arise  unto  late  posterity,  as  emblems 
of  mortal  vanities,  antidotes  against  pride,  vain-glory  and 
madding  vices.  Pagan  vain-glories  which  thought  the  world 
might  last  for  ever,  had  encouragement  for  ambition ;  and, 
finding  no  Atropos  unto  the  immortality  of  their  names,  were 
never  dampt  with  the  necessity  of  oblivion.  Even  old  ambi- 
tions had  the  advantage  of  ours,  in  the  attempts  of  their  vain- 
glories, who  acting  early,  and  before  the  probable  meridian  of 
time,  have  by  this  time  found  great  accomplishment  of  their 
designs,  whereby  the  ancient  heroes  have  already  outlasted 


120  SIR   THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

their  monuments  and  mechanical  preservations.  But  in  this 
latter  scene  of  time,  we  cannot  expect  such  mummies  unto 
our  memories,  when  ambition  may  fear  the  prophecy  of  Elias 
[that  the  world  may  last  but  six  thousand  years]  and  Charles 
the  Fifth  can  never  hope  to  live  within  two  Methuselahs  of 
Hector." 

The  remaining  pages  of  the  treatise  are  even  more 
ingeniously  wrought  and  fuller  of  unusual  music. 
We  shall  return  to  them  when  we  come  to  analyse  the 
peculiarities  of  the  style  of  their  author.  When,  how- 
ever, we  reach  the  last  surprising  paragraph,  and  turn 
to  a  consideration  of  the  whole  rhapsody  of  Urn-Burial, 
we  shall  probably  say  to  ourselves  that  the  radical 
scepticism  which  was  so  vehemently  denied  in  Religio 
Medici,  and  again  deprecated  in  the  Vulgar  Errors,  has 
here  escaped  into  notice,  unobserved  by  the  author, 
and  can  hardly  any  longer  be  refuted.  It  is  true  that 
in  the  very  final  paragraph  the  desire  to  subsist  in 
lasting  monuments,  and  to  escape  the  universal  pre- 
dicament of  oblivion,  is  mildly  reproved.  "  All  this," 
the  judicious  philosopher  feels  bound  to  remark,  "  is 
nothing  in  the  metaphysics  of  true  belief."  He 
reminds  himself,  much  as  if  a  church  bell  had  broken 
in  upon  his  studies,  that  he  is  not  a  priest  of  ancient 
Syria  but  a  respectable  physician  practising  in  the 
Christian  town  of  Norwich  :  — 

"  To  live  indeed  is  to  be  again  ourselves,  which  being  not 
only  an  hope,  but  an  evidence  in  noble  believers,  'tis  all  one 
to  lie  in  St.  Innocents'  churchyard  as  in  the  sands  of  Egypt. 
Ready  to  be  anything,  in  the  ecstasy  of  being  ever,  and  as 
content  with  six  foot  as  the  moles  of  Adrianus." 

This  is  the  only  tribute  to  the  Christian  religion 
which  Browne's  sombre  treatise  on  the  pomp  of  death 


IV.]     UBN-BUBIAL  AND   GABDEN  OF   CYBUS      121 

vouchsafes  to  give  us.  "Eeady  to  be  anything,  in 
the  ecstasy  of  being  ever;  "  we  must  make  what  we 
may  of  this  as  an  evidence  of  his  attitude,  at  this 
period  of  his  life,  to  the  problems  of  faith  and 
immortality. 

The  Urn-Burial  was  too  short  to  be  published  by 
itself,  and  therefore  there  was  added  to  it  a  treatise  on 
which  Browne,  apparently  at  the  same  time,  had  been 
working.  The  dedicatory  letter  preceding  Tlie  Garden 
of  Cyrus  is  dated  "  May  1  "  (1658),  as  is  that  which 
presents  the  Urn-Burial  to  Thomas  Le  Gros  of  Crost- 
wick.  We  must  take  this  date,  then,  as  being  that  on 
which  the  combined  manuscripts  were  sent  off  to  the 
printers,  not  that  on  which  the  composition  of  either 
of  them  was  finished.  It  has  been  observed  that  the 
striking  statement  with  which  The  Garden  of  Cyrus 
approaches  its  close,  "  the  quincunx  of  heaven  runs 
low,"  gives  us  a  date,  since  the  Hyades,  the  quincunx 
among  the  constellations,  only  approach  the  western 
horizon  at  midnight  towards  the  beginning  of  March. 
It  is  curious  that  two  of  the  three  gentlemen  who  had 
originally  invited  Browne  to  take  up  his  abode  in 
Norwich  in  1636,  survived  more  than  twenty  years 
later  to  receive  homage  in  the  little  volume  which  he 
published  in  his  prime.  Mr.  Nicholas  Bacon,  of 
Gillingham,  to  whom  Tlie  Garden  of  Cyrus  was  dedi- 
cated, was  one  of  Browne's  oldest  and  most  intimate 
friends.  He  was  the  fourth  son  of  Sir  Edmund  Bacon 
of  Eedgrave,  second  baronet,  and  became  himself 
the  first  baronet  of  the  Bacons  of  Gillingham.  Sir 
Edmund  Bacon  of  Kedgrave,  who  died  in  1649,  had 
been  intimately  friendly  with  the  physician,  who 
appears  to  have  attended  all  the  branches  of    this 


122  SIR   THOMAS   BROWNE  [chap. 

numerous  and  wealthy  family.  Nicholas  Bacon  had 
been  the  consistent  patron  and  intimate  admirer  of 
Browne  for  more  than  thirty  years,  when  he  died  in 
1666.  The  Hall  of  Gillingham,  with  a  park  running 
down  to  the  north  bank  of  the  Waveney,  was  in  the 
extreme  south  of  the  county,  almost  on  the  borders 
of  Suffolk. 

Browne  had  no  "  considerable  garden  "  attached  to 
his  house  in  Norwich.  But  Nicholas  Bacon  had 
"wisely  ordered  his  vegetable  delights  "  at  Gillingham, 
and  Browne  was  always  a  welcome  and,  we  may  be 
sure,  a  garrulous  visitor  there.  Bacon  collected  herbals ; 
he  possessed  even  Besler's  Hortus  Eystettensis,  the  most 
elephantine  of  a  giant  race ;  and  no  doubt  it  was  in  the 
library  at  Gillingham  that  Browne  culled  some  of  his 
most  learned  allusions.  He  was  now  eager,  not  only 
for  himself,  but,  as  we  shall  presently  see,  for  Evelyn, 
to  collect  a  nosegay  of  oddities  out  of  the  gardens  of 
the  world.  Tlie  Garden  of  Cyrus,  to  which  we  are 
about  to  turn,  is  formidable  enough  in  its  present 
congested  state ;  we  tremble  to  think  what  it  might 
have  been,  had  Browne  added  those  mathematical 
truths  which  he  was  persuaded  by  Nicholas  Bacon's 
"  discerning  judgment "  to  omit.  He  scarcely  permits 
himself  a  rapture,  yet  cannot  help  ejaculating,  as  he 
thinks  of  the  flower-beds  at  Gillingham,  '^the  Turks 
who  passed  their  days  in  gardens  here,  will  have  also 
gardens  hereafter,  and  delighting  in  flowers  on  earth, 
must  have  lilies  and  roses  in  heaven.''  Perhaps 
Nicholas  Bacon  was  a  little  too  fond  of  his  borders, 
and  neglected  his  county  duties  for  the  sake  of  his 
tulips,  since  Browne  hints  gently  that  "  that  insinuat- 
ing pleasure  is  seldom  without  some  extremity,"  and 


IV. J     UBN-BUBIAL  AND    QABDEN  OF  CYBU8      123 

adds,  surprisingly,  that  "Cato  seemed  to  dote  upon 
cabbage."  It  is  because  of  this  amiable  weakness  in 
his  friend,  that  the  author  of  The  Garden  of  Cyrus 
ventares  to  bring  a  somewhat  fantastic  treatise  in  the 
metaphysics  of  horticulture  to  present  to  the  polite 
and  learned  squire  of  Gillingham,  knowing  "him  to  be 
an  intrepid  gardener,  and  "a  serious  student  in  the 
highest  arcana  of  nature." 

The  full  title  of  Browne's  most  extraordinary,  and, 
it  must  be  confessed,  most  diffi.cult  literary  production, 
is  The  Garden  of  Cyrus,  or,  the  Quincuncial,  Lozenge  or 
Net-Work  Plantations  of  the  Ancients,  artificially,  natu- 
rally, mystically  coyisidered.  A  certain  degree  of  atten- 
tion is  paid  to  the  "  botanical  bravery  "  of  "  the  Persian 
gallants,"  whose  several  very  flowery  attributes  are 
celebrated  in  paragraphs  which  have  no  particular 
historical  basis ;  but  of  Cyrus  and  his  garden  Browne 
has  little  enough  information  to  give  us.  His  name  is 
simply  borrowed  to  give  a  title  to  the  tract  because 
"  all  stories,"  our  author  declares,  '^  do  look  upon  Cyrus 
as  the  splendid  and  regular  planter"  of  the  quincunx. 
But  what  is  a  quincunx  ?  This  it  is  now  a  highly 
important  point  to  decide,  for  we  are  entering  a  region 
thronged  with  specimens  of  this  unfamiliar  contrivance, 
an  atmosphere  which  produced  in  the  serious-minded 
S.  T.  Coleridge  a  sort  of  fit  of  hysterics,  in  which  he 
declared  that  there  were  "  quincunxes  in  heaven  above, 
quincunxes  in  earth  below,  quincunxes  in  the  mind  of 
man,  quincunxes  in  tones,  in  optic  nerves,  in  roots  of 
trees,  in  leaves,  in  everything." 

The  word  "  quincunx,"  for  which  Sir  Thomas  Browne 
cherished  a  love  so  extreme  that  he  used  it  in  and  out 
of  season  as  though  magical  virtue  lodged  in  the  very 


124  SIR   THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

sound  of  it,  had  not  long  before  been  introduced  into 
English,  use,  by  the  astrologers  of  the  school  of  William 
Lilly,  from  whom  Browne  doubtless  borrowed  it. 
Mr.  W.  A.  Craigie  defines  a  quincunx  as  an  arrange- 
ment or  disposition  of  five  objects  so  placed  that  four 
occupy  th.e  corners,  and  the  fifth  the  centre  of  a  square 
or  other  rectangle.  He  considers  that  this  sense  is 
due,  in  its  original  Latin  signification,  to  the  use  of 
five  dots  or  dashes  to  denote  five-twelfths  of  an  as,  and 
he  quotes  Browne  as  the  first  English  author  to  employ 
it  so.  But  the  astrologers  used  the  word  to  describe  a 
certain  aspect  of  plants,  and  gardeners  a  certain  ar- 
rangement of  trees  or  plants  in  groups  of  five.  "  His 
quincunx  darkens,  his  espaliers  meet,"  says  Pope  to 
Lord  Burlington,  showing  that  Yillario  laid  out  part 
of  his  plantations  in  sets  of  five  trees  eacb ;  and  Peter- 
borough helped  the  poet  to  do  the  same  at  Twickenham. 
A  massing  of  the  quincunx  arrangement  produces  an 
effect  analogous  to  that  of  the  lines  on  a  chess-board  or 
of  lattice-work,  while  botanists  recognise  a  quincuncial 
structure  in  several  of  the  parts  of  plants.  This  may 
serve,  perhaps ,  as  enough  to  lighten  with  a  glimmer 
the  porch  of  Browne's  dark  discourse. 

It  opens,  indeed,  with  a  sufficient  illumination  of  its 
own,  in  a  charming  claim  for  horticulture  to  take  a 
place  above  physic  and  surgery  in  our  affections :  — 

"  For  though  physic  may  plead  high,  from  that  medical 
act  of  God,  in  casting  so  deep  a  sleep  upon  our  first  parent, 
and  surgery  find  its  whole  art  in  that  one  passage  concerning 
the  rib  of  Adam ;  yet  is  there  no  rivality  with  garden  con- 
trivance and  herbary.  For,  if  Paradise  were  planted  the 
third  day  of  the  creation,  as  wiser  divinity  concludeth,  the 
nativity  thereof  was  too  early  for  horoscopy.  Gardens  were 
before  gardeners,  and  but  some  hours  after  the  earth." 


IV.]     UBN-BUBIAL  AND    GABDEN  OF  CYBUS      125 

We  then  meander  through  the  records  of  the  ancients, 
in  the  course  of  which,  as  we  might  have  anticipated, 
Browne  does  not  fail  to  loiter,  enamoured,  in  the 
"pensile"  or  hanging  gardens  of  Semiramis,  or  to 
dwell  on  the  cause  of  the  humiliation  of  Nebuchad- 
nezzar, whose  "  melancholy  metamorphosis  '^  he  attri- 
butes to  a  re-action  against  his  excess  of  satisfaction  in 
"  the  bravery  of  the  paradise  '^  of  flowers  which  he  had 
built  for  himself  overhanging  his  city  of  Babylon. 
But  all  these  reminiscences  of  antiquity  soon  concen- 
trate on  the  contemplation  of  the  quincunx  pure  and 
simple,  "the  emphatical  decussation  or  fundamental 
figure"  which  Brown  discovers  in  every  record  of 
ancient  gardening  or  plantation.  But,  as  though  he 
saw,  down  the  avenue  of  time,  the  unborn  Coleridge 
waiting  to  laugh  at  his  obsession,  Browne  gathers 
himself  together,  and  mentions  several  objects  in 
which  he  does  not  perceive  the  quincuncial  arrange- 
ment. He  takes  credit  to  himself,  for  instance,  in  dis- 
missing the  cross  of  St.  Andrew,  and  the  Labarum  of 
Constantine,  and  the  Eabbinical  Tenupha,  and  the 
crux  ansata  on  the  bosom  of  Serapis,  as  none  of  them 
necessarily  quincuncial.  But  having  made  this  hand- 
some concession, he  seems  to  repent  of  it,  and  gathering 
his  forces  together,  during  the  remainder  of  The  Garden 
of  Cyrus  it  is  quincunx,  quincunx  all  the  way,  till  the 
light  of  heaven  seems  darkened  by  this  multitude  of 
revolving  chess-boards.  The  close  of  the  first  chapter, 
into  which  we  may  gaze  as  into  a  dark  and  vitreous, 
but  translucent  pool,  offers  a  favourable  example  of  the 
strange  jargon  in  which  the  whole  treatise  is  composed. 
It  is  all,  perhaps,  at  first  sight,  unintelligible,  but  if  we 
keep  our  eyes  fixed  on  the  idea,  not  without  some  risk 


126  SIB  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

of  vertigOj  we  see  the  element  to  be  pellucid,  and  we 
see  Browne's  fancies,  like  slow  and  aged  fishes,  gliding 
about  in  tlie  twilight  of  it :  — 

"  Since  even  in  Paradise  itself,  the  tree  of  knowledge  was 
placed  in  the  middle  of  the  garden,  whatever  was  the  ambient 
figure,  there  wanted  not  a  centre  and  rule  of  decussation. 
Whether  the  groves  and  sacred  plantations  of  antiquity  were 
not  thus  orderly  placed,  either  by  quaternios,  or  quintuple 
ordinations,  may  favourably  be  doubted.  For  since  they  were 
so  methodical  in  the  constitutions  of  their  temples,  as  to 
observe  the  due  situation,  aspect,  manner,  form,  and  order  in 
architectonical  relations,  whether  they  were  not  as  distinct  in 
their  groves  and  plantations  about  them,  in  form  and  species 
respectively  unto  their  deities,  is  not  without  probability  of 
conjecture.  And  in  their  groves  of  the  sun  this  was  a  fit 
number  by  multiplication  to  denote  the  days  of  the  year ;  and 
might  hieroglyphically  speak  as  much,  as  the  mystical  statue 
of  Janus  in  the  language  of  his  fingers.  And  since  they  were 
so  critical  in  the  number  of  his  horses,  the  strings  of  his  harp, 
the  rays  about  his  head,  denoting  the  orbs  of  heaven,  the 
seasons  and  months  of  the  year,  witty  idolatry  would  hardly 
be  flat  in  other  a^Dpropriations." 

The  second  chapter  of  TJie  Garden  of  Cyrus  deals 
with  the  quincuncial  form  as  adopted  in  the  arts.  We 
read  of  the  mysterious  arrangement  in  architecture, 
in  painting,  in  sculpture,  of  "  the  ancient  pillar-work 
observable  in  Ionic  pieces  "  and  of  the  "  f  asciations  and 
handsome  ligatures"  fastened  quincuncially  about 
the  heads  of  princes.  It  appears  that  the  beds  of  the 
ancients  were  corded  in  a  quincunx,  and  that  the  ven- 
erable game  of  knuckle-bones  has  its  source  in  the 
same  rhomboidal  decussation.  The  nosegay-nets  which, 
it  seems,  were  suspended  under  the  chins  of  kings, 
were  eminently  quincuncial,  and  so  was  the  too-famous 


IV.]     UBN-BUBIAL  AND   GAB  DEN  OF  CYBUS      127 

network  of  Vulcan  which,  on  a  scandalous  occasion, 
caused  inextinguishable  laughter  in  heaven.  Even  the 
"  neat  retiary  spider,"  who  spreads  his  glittering  quin- 
cunx over  the  dewy  furze-bushes  at  dawn,  is  not 
forgotten,  nor  the  pattern  upon  nutcrackers,  nor  the 
Macedonian  phalanx.  Nothing  is  too  noble,  nothing 
is  too  humdrum  for  Browne  to  drag  it  in.  It  would 
almost  have  been  simpler  to  have  said  that  Providence 
had  arranged  the  entire  universe  in  the  form  of  a 
chequer-board,  and  so  have  done  with  it.  All  is  sub- 
dued to  Browne's  passion  for  remote,  odd,  and  splendid 
words ;  and  if  we  are  called  upon  to  observe  the  quin- 
cuncial  arrangement  in  "  mascles,  fusils,  and  sal  tyres," 
we  may  depend  upon  it  that  it  is  to  give  the  author 
an  opportunity  of  employing  terms  so  quaint  and 
rare. 

He  comes  back  to  gardens,  and  the  botanical  world, 
where  indeed  his  contention  has  a  considerable  plausi- 
bility. He  shows  himself  a  careful  scholar  of  the 
herbalists  of  his  day,  and  is  closely,  and  picturesquely, 
observant  of  the  native  plants  of  the  county  of  Norfolk. 
All  this  part  of  The  Garden  of  Cyrus,  however,  is  al- 
most unreadable,  so  crabbed  is  it  and  so  congested 
with  technical  description  of  the  "  elegant  co-ordina- 
tion of  vegetables."  A  burst  of  pure  melodious  fancy, 
therefore,  such  as  the  following,  trembling  indeed 
on  the  borderland  of  astrology,  is  highly  refreshing 
to  the  ear  :  — 

"  Could  we  satisfy  ourselves  in  the  position  of  the  lights 
above,  or  discover  the  wisdom  of  that  order  so  invariably 
maintained  in  the  fixed  stars  of  heaven  ;  could  we  have  any 
light,  why  the  stellary  part  of  the  first  mass  separated  into 
this  order,  that  the  girdle  of  Orion  should  ever  maintain  its 


128  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

line,  and  the  two  stars  in  Charles'  wain  never  leave  pointing  at 
the  pole  star  ;  we  might  abate  the  Pythagorical  music  of  the 
spheres,  the  sevenfold  pipe  of  Pan,  and  the  strange  crypto- 
graphy of  Gaffarel  in  his  starry  book  of  heaven." 

In  his  most  serious  consideration  of  natural  objects 
Browne  flashes  the  dark  lantern  of  his  v^^it  upon  us, 
often  leaving  us  more  dazzled  than  illuminated. 
When,  for  instance,  lie  is  describing  the  bristling  and 
'^  palisadoed "  head  of  that  strange  plant,  the  teazel, 
he  breaks  off  to  remark,  in  his  dreamy  way,  that 
"  in  the  house  of  the  solitary  maggot  we  may  find 
the  seraglio  of  Solomon,"  immediately  appending  to 
this  harmonious,  if  mysterious,  utterance,  a  string  of 
phrases  so  harsh  and  filled  with  words  so  ugly  and 
pedantic,  that  the  teazel  is  a  bush  of  velvet  by  the 
side  of  them.  It  is  certainly  in  The  Garden  of  Cyrus 
that  we  find  Browne  in  his  most  provoking  mood, 
least  attentive  to  the  just  requirements  of  literature, 
and  bent  most  wilfully  in  pandering  to  mere  intel- 
lectual vanity,  yet  this  radically  bad  book  contains 
some  of  the  most  lovely  paragraphs  which  passed  from 
an  English,  pen  during  the  seventeenth  century.  Of 
these  the  most  famous  is  that  with  which  the  treatise 
closes.  The  disquisition  becomes  particularly  dull  in 
the  final  chapter,  wandering  away  in  the  most  tedious 
fashion  to  astrological  nonsense  of  all  kinds,  "  nauseat- 
ing crambe  verities  and  questions  over-queried."  At 
last  it  would  seem  that  Browne  put  the  exhausted 
manuscript  by,  leaving  it  without  an  ending.  Then, 
inspired  by  precisely  the  same  imaginative  ecstasy  in 
which  he  composed  the  Urn-Burial,  he  turned  to  the 
unfinished  Garden  of  Cyrus  on  that  midnight  of  March. 
1658,  and  rounded  it  off  with  a  glorious  final  page. 


IV.]     UBN-BUBIAL  AND   GAB  DEN  OF  CYBUS      129 

We  speak  of  purple  passages,  but  was  one  more  radiant 
than  this  ever  woven  upon  the  richest  of  Tyrian 
looms  ? 

"  But  the  quincunx  of  Heaven  runs  low,  and  'tis  time  to 
close  the  five  ports  of  knowledge.  We  are  unwilling  to  spin 
out  our  awaking  thoughts  into  the  phantasms  of  sleep,  which 
often  continueth  precogitations,  making  cables  of  cobwebs  and 
wildernesses  of  handsome  groves.  Besides,  Hippocrates  hath 
spoke  so  little,  and  the  oneirocritical  masters  have  left  such 
frigid  interpretations  from  plants,  that  there  is  little  encour- 
agement to  dream  of  Paradise  itself.  Nor  will  the  sweetest 
delight  of  gardens  afford  much  comfort  in  sleep,  wherein  the 
dulness  of  that  sense  shakes  hands  with  delectable  odours, 
and,  though  in  the  bed  of  Cleopatra,  can  hardly  with  any 
delight  raise  up  the  ghost  of  a  rose. 

"  Night,  which  Pagan  theology  could  make  the  daughter 
of  Chaos,  affords  no  advantage  to  the  description  of  order ; 
although  no  lower  than  that  mass  can  we  derive  its  genealogy. 
All  things  began  in  order,  so  shall  they  end,  and  so  shall  they 
begin  again ;  according  to  the  ordainer  of  order  and  mystical 
mathematics  of  the  city  of  heaven. 

"  Though  Somnus  in  Homer  be  sent  to  rouse  up  Aga- 
memnon, I  find  no  such  effects  in  these  drowsy  approaches 
of  sleep.  To  keep  our  eyes  open  longer,  were  but  to  act 
our  Antipodes.  The  huntsmen  are  up  in  America,  and  they 
are  already  past  their  first  sleep  in  Persia.  But  who  can  be 
drowsy  at  that  hour  which  freed  us  from  everlasting  sleep  ? 
Or  have  slumbering  thoughts  at  that  time,  when  sleep  itself 
must  end,  and,  as  some  conjecture,  all  shall  awake  again  ?  " 

The  two  treatises  were  published  in  one  volume,  in 
London,  in  1658.  The  book  contained,  as  its  frontis- 
piece, pictures  of  four  of  the  Walsingham  urns,  drawn, 
as  we  are  told,  with  a  piece  of  charcoal  found  in  one 
of  them,  and  provided  with  a  quincuncial  tag  out  of 
Propertius.  In  front  of  The  Garden  of  Cyrus  was  a 
print  of  the  ground-plan  of  a  network  plantation. 

K 


130  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

In  the  month,  of  January,  in  this  fullest  year  of 
Browne's  intellectual  existence,  a  further  stimulus  had 
been  given  to  his  mental  energy  by  a  correspondence 
with  the  celebrated  John  Evelyn.  The  philosopher 
of  Sayes  Court  had  long  harboured  the  idea  of  writing 
a  great  book  on  gardens,  which  should  swallow  up  all 
the  recognised  herbals  of  the  day,  such  as  those  of 
Parkinson  and  Gerard,  while  treating  horticulture  on 
a  more  purely  scientific  basis.  This  scheme  was  to 
take  the  form  of  a  huge  Elysium  Britannicum,  but 
although  Evelyn  continued  to  play  with  the  notion 
almost  to  the  end  of  his  life,  the  magnum  opus  never 
appeared.  What  did,  however,  appear  in  this  year, 
1658,  was  Evelyn's  graceful  little  book  named  the 
French  Gardiner,  for  which  Browne's  desultory  help 
was  called  in.  By  what  Evelyn  describes  as  "  an  ex- 
traordinary humanity"  on  Browne's  part,  the  Norwich 
physician  threw  himself  warmly  into  Evelyn's  plan ; 
and  possibly  too  warmly,  for  his  learning  and  sugges- 
tions may  have  overpowered  the  spirits  of  the  accom- 
plished amateur,  who  was  not  accustomed  to  apply 
himself  to  his  themes  with  the  vehement  weight  which 
Browne  brought  to  them.  One  human  point  which  is 
very  curious  is,  that  Evelyn's  long  letter  to  Browne  on 
the  subject  of  "caves,  grots,  mounts,  and  irregular 
ornaments  of  gardens  "  is  dated  January  28,  1658,  and 
was  therefore  written  on  the  very  day  after  the  death 
of  his  only  son  (January  27),  the  occasion  when  Evelyn 
burst  forth  with  "Here  ends  the  joy  of  my  life,  and 
for  which  I  go  ever  mourning  to  the  grave."  His 
anguish  at  the  loss  of  this  exquisite  child  — "  for 
beauty  of  body,  a  very  angel ;  for  endowment  of  mind, 
of  incredible   and  rare  hopes"  —  was   poignant  and 


IV.]     UBN-BUBIAL  AND    GAB  DEN  OF  CYBUS      131 

permanent.  The  stoicism,  therefore,  which  writes  at 
such  length,  on  a  scientific  matter,  to  a  fellow- 
philosopher,  with  the  little  tender  body  hardly  laid 
out  in  the  room  above,  is  remarkable  for  its  dignity. 
Yet,  before  Evelyn  can  close  his  epistle,  a  cry  of  nature 
breaks  forth. 

-  Browne,  although  already  busy  upon  his  Urn- 
Burial,  responded  warmly  to  Evelyn's  appeal,  and 
indeed  the  letter  to  which  reference  has  just  been 
made  acknowledges  the  receipt  of  "  papers  which  you 
have  transmitted  me."  In  the  preface  to  his  Acetaria, 
published  more  than  forty  years  later,  Evelyn  described 
what  his  plan  had  been  of  a  vast  work  on  a  royal 
garden.  It  appears  that  Browne  was  to  undertake 
several  sections  in  the  book,  and  the  names  of  these 
are  fitted  to  stimulate  our  curiosity.  There  was  to 
be  a  chapter  by  Browne  "  Of  Garden  Burial,"  another 
"  Of  Stupendous  and  Wonderful  Plants,"  another  "  Of 
Paradise  and  of  the  most  famous  Gardens  in  the  world." 
One  section,  "  Of  the  Coronary  Garden,"  survives,  and 
unquestionably  belongs  to  this  year  of  Browne's  climac- 
teric, 1658.  It  is  a  charming  specimen  of  his  richest 
prose.  The  "  use  of  flowery  crowns  and  garlands  " 
excites  our  philosopher  to  the  height  of  his  mellifluity, 
and  he  revels  in  fragrant  and  floral  imagery.  A 
passage  from  this  essay  may  be  compared  with  what 
we  find  in  its  better-known  coevals,  the  Urn-Burial 
and  the  Garden  of  Cyrus :  — 

"  In  their  convivial  gardens  [the  ancient  Greeks]  had  respect 
unto  plants  preventing  drunkenness,  or  discussing  [i.e.  dispers- 
ing] the  exhalations  of  wine ;  wherein,  besides  roses,  taking 
in  ivy,  vervain,  and  melilote,  they  made  use  of  divers  of  small 
beauty  or  good  odour.    The  solemn  festival  garlands  were 


132  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

made  properly  unto  their  gods,  and  accordingly  contrived 
from  the  plants  sacred  unto  such  deities ;  and  their  sacrificial 
ones  were  selected  under  such  circumstances.  Their  honorary 
crowns  triumphal,  ovary,  civical,  obsidional,  had  little  of 
flowers  in  them ;  and  their  funeral  garlands  had  little  of 
beauty  in  them  besides  roses,  while  they  made  them  of  myrtle, 
rosemary,  and  apium,  under  symbolical  intimations.  But  our 
florid  and  purely  ornamental  gardens,  delightful  unto  sight 
and  smell,  nor  framed  according  to  any  mystical  and  sym- 
bolical considerations,  are  of  more  free  election,  and  so  may 
be  made  to  excel  those  of  the  ancients.  We  have  China, 
India,  and  a  New  World  to  supply  us,  besides  the  great  dis- 
tinction of  flowers  unknown  unto  antiquity,  and  the  varieties 
thereof  arising  from  art  and  nature." 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  long  posthumous 
tract,  called  Observations  upon  several  Plants  mentioned 
in  Scripture,  was  also  composed  at  this  time  as  a  contri- 
bution to  Evelyn's  projected  Elysium.  According  to  a 
pencil  note  in  Evelyn's  handwriting,  the  Observations 
would  seem  to  have  been  addressed  in  the  form  of  let- 
ters "  to  Sir  Nicholas  Bacon."  Evelyn  doubtless  meant 
Mr.  Nicholas  Bacon  of  Gillingham,  to  whom,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  Garden  of  Cyrus  was  dedicated.  It  may 
be  conjectured,  indeed,  that  that  work  also  was  com- 
posed as  a  chapter  of  the  great  book  on  gardens,  and 
was  perhaps  published  in  1658,  because  Evelyn  may 
have  sent  it  back  to  its  author  as  being  admirable  in 
itself,  but  not  fitted  to  his  particular  design.  We  may 
further  observe  that  Tenison,  writing  in  1686,  shortly 
after  Browne's  death,  speaks  of  having  selected  the 
plant  chapters  above  mentioned  "out  of  many  dis- 
ordered papers,"  so  that  Browne's  contributions  to  the 
imaginative  treatment  of  horticulture  were  probably 
much  more  extensive  than  those  which  we  now  possess. 


IV.] 

Doubtless,  also,  the  reason  why  he  did  not,  during 
his  own  lifetime,  publish  these  highly-characteristic 
portions  of  his  work  was  that  he  was  always  waiting 
for  Evelyn  to  complete  his  design  —  a  design  which 
was  not  finally  abandoned  until  1699. 

Tn  the  letter  which  accompanied  the  manuscript  of 
his  essay,  "  On  the  Coronary  Garden,"  Browne  an- 
nounced another  on  the  incision  and  propagation  of 
plants,  that  is  to  say,  on  grafting.  This  occurs  among 
the  papers  first  printed  by  Simon  Wilkin  in  1835,  and 
the  very  long  catalogue  of  proposed  experiments  which 
it  includes  shows  what  an  ardent  gardener  Browne 
had  now  become.  Norwich  was  famous  for  its  gardens 
and  orchards,  "  very  much  addicted,"  as  Evelyn  puts 
it,  "to  the  flowery  part."  Browne  either  had  made, 
or  intended  shortly  to  make,  an  incredible  number  of 
graftings,  such  as  of  a  hornbeam  upon  a  beech,  a  maple 
upon  a  hornbeam,  a  sycamore  upon  a  maple,  ringing 
the  changes  upon  all  possible  trees,  and  even  such,  one 
would  suppose,  hopeless  experiments  on  bushes  as 
grafting  rosemary  upon  ivy,  and  a  gooseberry  on  a 
mezereon.  In  the  meadows  around  Norwich  he  had 
observed  currants  and  berberries  growing  on  the  pol- 
lard heads  of  willows,  and  this  suggested  to  him  a 
garden  which  should  be  a  sort  of  museum  of  compli- 
cated botanical  "freaks."  All  this  throws  amusing 
light  on  his  eagerness  and  even  his  credulity,  although 
he  believed  himself  exceedingly  clear-sighted.  When 
Evelyn,  for  instance,  talked  loosely  about  miraculous 
gardens  seen  floating  about,  masses  of  ambulatory 
blossom  on  the  backs  of  huge  fishes,  Browne,  with  grave 
courtesy,  suggested  a  sceptical  attitude  towards  this 
"  rather  extraordinary  and  anomalous  "  phenomenon. 


134  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

It  would  seem  that  Browne's  correspondence  with 
Evelyn  soon  came  to  a  close,  and  it  is  very  noticeable 
that  when,  a  year  or  two  later,  Evelyn  was  looking 
about  for  men  of  high  scientific  attainment  to  form  a 
sort  of  first  committee  of  the  K-oyal  Society,  his  choice 
does  not  seem  to  have  fallen  upon  his  brilliant  and 
learned  acquaintance  at  Norwich.  I  do  not  know  that 
any  conjecture  has  been  made  as  to  the  reason  of 
Browne's  exclusion  from,  or  at  least  non-inclusion  in, 
that  interesting  body.  I  would  suggest  as  a  plausible 
cause  the  reputation  which  Browne  had  now  gained  as 
an  infatuated  astrologer.  We  have  to  take  into  full 
consideration  the  hold  which  the  chimerical  art  had 
taken  on  the  minds  of  learned  men  of  his  generation. 
The  sixteenth  century  had  reeked  of  geomancy  and 
divination  ;  they  had  tainted  all  the  physical  science  of 
that  age.  In  the  earliest  times,  Galen  had  encouraged 
medical  astrology;  he  accepted,  he  perhaps  first  de- 
fined, the  morbific  influence  of  the  moon.  Paracelsus, 
though  sceptical,  had  admitted  the  existence  of  astral 
diseases,  and  Cardan,  a  consistent  necromancer,  is  said 
to  have  starved  himself  rather  than  that  the  predicted 
date  of  his  death  should  pass  and  he  survive.  These 
were  names,  and  these  were  traditions,  which  weighed 
on  the  minds  of  physicians  of  the  class  of  Browne,  who 
firmly  believed  that  the  therapeutic  action  of  different 
metals  corresponded  to  the  influence  of  each  planet,  so 
that  Venus,  a  type  benevolent  and  mild,  was  the  equi- 
valent of  copper,  while  the  morose  and  sinister  Saturn 
was  represented  by  lead.  The  pathological  influence 
of  stars  was  firmly  believed  in,  and  survived  among 
leading  physicians  until  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  when  it   is   extraordinary  to   find   such   an 


IV.]      UBN-BUBIAL  AND    GABDEN  OF  CYBUS      135 

enlightened  man  as  Eichard  Mead  still  acknowledging 
the  possibility  of  a  lunar  influence  in  medicine. 

It  is  curious  that  experience  and  common  sense  did 
not  intervene  to  destroy  this  maddest  of  vulgar 
errors.^  But  the  aspect  of  the  planets  particularly  in 
the  prevalence  of  mysterious  epidemics,  and  in  the 
deaths  of  kings,  was  not  to  be  put  by.  It  was 
Voltaire,  when  he  riddled  the  whole  empirical  art  of 
divination  with  his  wit,  who  may  be  said  to  have 
given  astrology  its  death-blow.  He  it  was  who 
pointed  out  the  snobbishness  of  the  stars,  which 
attended  only  to  the  fates  of  popes  and  princes ;  "  il 
n'y  avait  d'etoiles  que  pour  eux :  le  reste  de  I'univers 
etait  de  la  canaille  dont  les  etoiles  ne  se  melaient  pas." 
Browne,  from  the  nature  of  his  imagination,  from 
his  tendency  to  the  mysterious  and  the  transcendental 
part  of  thought,  was  the  easy  prey  of  the  astrologers. 
He  had  become  intimate  with  Arthur  Dee,  a  doctor 
in  practice  at  his  side  in  the  parish  of  St.  George 
Tomblands,  in  Norwich,  who  was  a  son  of  the  yet 
more  notorious  necromancer.  Dr.  John  Dee.  Arthur 
Dee  thrilled  Browne  with  accounts  of  how  he  was 
initiated  into  the  use  of  the  magic  stone,  a  globe  of 
polished  quartz  crystal,  with  which  his  father  did 
tremendous  things  in  the  castle  of  Tribau  in  Bohemia. 

1  We  may  note  that  mere  erudition  rather  fostered  it. 
Mark  Pattison  points  out  that  the  most  learned  man  in  Europe 
in  the  previous  generation,  Isaac  Casaubon,  swallowed  all  the 
astounding  fictions  of  alchemy.  "  All  belief  is  with  him  a 
question  of  authority  and  books;  if  a  great  author  has  said  a 
thing  it  is  so."  What  was  necessary  for  the  new  philosophy 
to  do  was  to  insist,  as  Descartes  did,  that  sense  was  not  the 
monopoly  of  the  book-learned,  who,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  were 
blinded  by  their  superstitious  respect  for  the  ancients. 


136  SIR  THOMAS  BROWKE  [chap. 

In  1651,  Arthur  Dee  had  died  in  Norwich,  after,  it 
would  seem,  introducing  Browne  to  a  more  remarkable 
man,  and  a  still  more  ardent  astrologer.  When  he 
was  resident  in  Moscow,  twenty  years  before  his 
death,  Arthur  Dee  comj)Osed  in  Latin  a  highly  recon- 
dite Arcanum  of  Hermetic  Philosophy,  which  no  less  a 
person  than  Elias  Ashmole  translated,  concealing  his 
own  name  under  an  anagram.  Dee  seems  to  have 
been  the  link  which  united  the  inner  circle  of  English 
astrologers  together,  Ashmole,  and  Lilly,  and  Booker 
and  Backhouse.  In  1653,  the  dying  Backhouse  had 
whispered  to  Ashmole,  syllable  by  syllable,  the  true 
and  innermost  secret  of  the  Philosopher's  Stone ;  this 
would  have  been  a  more  impressive  event,  if  Back- 
house had  not  come  to  life  again  for  nine  more  years,  and 
if  Ashmole  had  not  meanwhile  forgotten  the  formula. 

In  this  circle  of  mystery,  there  is  evidence  that 
Browne  desired  to  tread.  He  was  the  depositary  of 
Arthur  Dee's  manuscripts,  and  in  1658  he  offered  to  lend 
them  to  Ashmole,  "but  I  shall  intreat  the  favour  to  have 
them  returned."  He  repeated  to  Ashmole,  in  perfect 
gravity,  monstrous  stories  of  alchemy  and  geomancy 
with  which  Arthur  Dee  had  gulled  him,  or  had  himself 
been  gulled.  It  is  true  that  during  the  Common- 
wealth there  was  a  great  recrudescence  of  astrological 
superstition  in  western  Europe,  and  that  England  did 
not  escape.  No  doubt,  within  the  new-born  E^oyal 
Society  itself,  there  were  many  who  believed  in  the 
malefic  aspect  of  the  stars,  and  dreamed  of  the  philo- 
sopher's stone.  But  they  did  not  publish  their  faith, 
and  the  whole  tendency  of  the  society  was  to  discour- 
age the  condition  of  mind  in  which  a  belief  in  the 
chimerical  formulas  of  the  astrologers  was  possible.    If 


IV.]     UBN-BUBIAL  AND    GABDEN  OF  CTBUS      137 

we  are  surprised  to  find  that  Thomas  Browne  was 
neither  an  original  nor  an  elected  member  of  the 
Eoyal  Society,  it  is  surely  enough  to  recollect  that  he 
was  known  too  well  as  the  author  of  TJie  Garden  of 
Cyrus. 

Towards  the  autumn  of  the  eventful  year  1658, 
Browne  received  a  letter  from  Mr.  (afterwards  Sir 
William)  Dugdale,  the  already  celebrated  antiquary 
and  herald,  whom  he  had  quoted  by  name  in  the 
Urn-Burial.  Dugdale,  emboldened  by  this  civility  to 
believe  himself  known  to  the  Norwich  naturalist, 
ventured,  although  a  stranger,  to  address  a  letter  of 
inquiry  to  Browne.  This  was  met  by  Browne  with 
his  accustomed  effusive  courtesy,  and  already  in 
October  he  is  Dugdale's  "much-honoured  friend." 
Dugdale  had,  in  the  preceding  year,  made  a  tour 
through  the  fen-country  at  the  desire  of  Lord  Gorges, 
who  was  surveyor-general  of  the  Great  Level,  and 
who  commissioned  Dugdale  to  write  a  book,  which 
appeared  at  last,  in  1662,  as  the  History  of  Imhanking 
and  Draining  of  divers  Fens  and  Marshes.  The  herald 
had  some  inquiries  to  make  of  Browne  respecting  the 
natural  history  of  that  district,  and  in  particular  with 
regard  to  a  curious  fossil  fish,  found  on  Conington 
Down,  near  Soham.  Dugdale,  on  his  part,  is  desired 
to  give  Browne  information  about  urns  and  Roman 
coins  which  have  turned  up  in  these  explorations  of 
the  Tens,  and  the  antiquary  is  vexed  at  being  unable 
to  gratify  his  friend  by  adding  to  Browne's  numis- 
matical  collections.  When  Dugdale,  who  wrote  first 
from  his  country  house,  Blyth  Hall  in  Warwickshire, 
returns  to  London,  he  is  laid  up  for  several  weeks 
with  the  scurvy,  when  Elias  Ashmole  takes  up  the 


138  SIE  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap.  iv. 

correspondence  with  Browne  for  him,  until  Dngdale  is 
well  again  in  the  spring  of  1659.  He  is  busy,  mean- 
while, on  the  second  volume  of  his  famous  Monasticon, 
and  applies  for  all  manner  of  information  to  Browne, 
who  gossips  to  him  in  return  about  rare  birds  he  has 
been  seeing  in  the  fields,  and  strange  seaweeds  he  has 
been  picking  up  on  the  shore  of  Norfolk. 


CHAPTER  y 

LAST  YEAKS:   1659-1682 

No  one  observed  the  dying  flutter  of  the  Common- 
wealth with  more  eagerness,  or  welcomed  the  return 
of  royalty  with  greater  joy  than  Thomas  Browne.  On 
Coronation  Day,  his  calm  spirit  was  quite  unusually 
exalted,  and  his  description  of  the  great  doings  in 
Norwich  is  jubilant.  He  notes  with  exultation  that 
Cromwell  is  being  hanged  and  burned  in  effigy  every- 
where ;  and  he  grimly  adds,  "  whose  head  is  now  upon 
Westminster  Hall,  together  with  Ireton's  and  Brad- 
shaw's.'^  Norwich  broke  out  into  beacon  bonfires; 
there  were  feasts  here  and  feasts  there,  one  little 
play  was  acted  by  strollers  in  the  Market  Place,  and 
another  by  young  citizens  on  a  stage  at  Timber  Hill. 
There  was  no  resistance  to  the  king  in  Norwich, 
where  "it  is  thought  by  degrees  most  will  come  to 
conformity'' ;  nor  to  the  Church,  for  the  observation  of 
Lent  is  reinstituted,  which  "  makes  Yarmouth  and 
fishermen  rejoice."  Dr.  Browne  moves  up  and  down 
the  streets  of  the  city,  exulting  in  the  happy  change, 
and  greeting  one  highly  respectable  client  after  an- 
other with  that  "civil  and  debonair"  expansiveness 
for  which  he  was  famous,  while  the  great  minster 
bells  of  Christ  Church  peal  forth  in  the  early  April 

139 


140  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

morning,  and  can  scarcely  be  persuaded  to  cease  until 
the  stroke  of  noon. 

On  the  17th  of  August  1661,  in  consequence  of 
these  great  affairs,  Edward  Eeynolds,  who  had  been 
consecrated  Bishop  of  Norwich,  came  to  take  up  his 
residence  at  the  Palace,  which  had  been  deserted  since 
the  Puritans  turned  out  Joseph  Hall.  Reynolds,  a 
very  liberal  churchman,  who  had  been  Warden  of 
Merton  College,  Oxford,  was  the  "  loving  friend  "  of 
Browne,  and  his  arrival  a  great  delight  to  the  philo- 
sopher, who  was  careful  in  his  attendance  at  the 
Cathedral  when  the  bishop  preached,  with  his  croak- 
ing voice,  but  eloquently,  on  the  25th  of  August.  It 
is  interesting  to  note,  as  an  instance  of  the  long 
hunger  of  the  Anglican  worshippers  now  satisfied  at 
last,  that  Browne  records  the  delight  he  feels  at  seeing 
Eeynolds  in  his  place  at  church.  "He  sitteth,"  he 
says  gleefully,  "  in  his  seat  against  the  pulpit,  hand- 
somely built  up  and  in  his  episcopal  vestments,  and 
pronounceth  the  Blessing  or  the  Peace  of  God  at  the 
end."  It  was  long  since  Christ  Church  Cathedral  had 
seen  such  seemly  ritual. 

The  education  of  a  remarkably  fine  and  intelligent 
brood  of  children  occupied  Dr.  Thomas  and  Mrs. 
Dorothy  Browne  very  pleasantly  and  fully  at  this 
period  of  their  lives.  The  domestic  records  of  the 
family  are  charming  to  an  unusual  degree.  The  young 
people  were  trained  carefully  and  firmly,  without 
severity,  and  it  is  to  be  specially  noticed  that  the 
father  spared  to  each  of  them  a  degree  of  sympathetic 
consideration  which  was  rare  indeed  in  those  days  of 
stiff  parental  rigour.  To  his  sons,  at  a  very  tender 
age,  we   find   Thomas   Browne  writing  as  to  valued 


v.] 


LAST  YEAES  141 


friends,  anxious  to  share  his  interests  with  them, 
studiously  careful  not  to  wound  their  susceptibilities 
or  to  hold  them  at  a  distance.  He  was  rewarded  by  a 
touching  devotion  and,  from  those  who  survived  him, 
by  an  almost  adoring  piety.  Bread  cast  upon  the 
waters  never  came  back  to  the  giver  more  plenteously 
than  did  Browne's  loving  solicitude  for  his  children. 
It  is  time  that  we  should  be  introduced  to  these  young 
persons,  although  it  is  a  little  difficult  to  be  sure  that 
we  can  count  them  all.  One  infant  daughter,  Doro- 
thy, had  died  in  1652;  two  other  daughters,  Elizabeth, 
afterwards  Mrs.  Lyttleton,  and  Anne,  afterwards  Mrs. 
Fairfax,  are  patent  to  us  as  born  about  1648  and  1650. 
A  fourth  daughter,  Lady  Cotterell,  cannot  be  clearly 
placed ;  but  the  two  sons,  delightful  boys,  and  the 
apples  of  their  father's  eyes,  are  plain  enough. 

Edward,  the  eldest  of  the  family,  and  certainly  the 
most  gifted,  was  born  at  Norwich  in  1644,  and  was 
therefore  a  lad  of  sixteen  at  the  time  of  the  Kestora- 
tion.  He  was  succeeded,  in  1646,  by  Thomas,  who 
inherited  a  less  buoyant  constitution,  with  some  melan- 
choly in  his  temperament,  but  was  eminently  "  bid- 
dable" and  trustworthy.  Both  boys  received  their 
earliest  training  in  the  Norwich  grammar  school,  and 
Edward  went,  in  1659,  to  Trinity  College,  Cambridge. 
It  seems  to  have  been  thought  that  "  honest  Tom " 
was  more  fitted  for  business,  and  therefore  in  the 
autumn  of  1660,  although  only  fourteen  years  of  age, 
he  was  sent  alone,  in  a  vintage  ship,  from  Yarmouth 
to  Bordeaux,  apparently  that  he  might  learn  French 
and  study  the  wine  trade.  The  tender  and  anxious 
letters  which  his  parents  wrote  to  him  have  been  pre- 
served, and  are  very  pleasant  reading.     Except  that 


142  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

he  liad  introductions  to  a  Mr.  Dade  in  Bordeaux,  and 
was  well  supplied  with  money  from  home,  the  boy, 
who  knew  no  French,  seems  to  have  been  thrown 
entirely  on  his  own  resources.  He  did  not  stay  long 
in  Bordeaux  ;  we  find  him  at  Saintes,  at  La  Bochelle, 
at  Cognac,  at  the  island  of  Ehe.  His  father's  advices 
to  him  are  what  we  should  expect  them  to  be :  — 

"  Be  not  dejected  and  melancholy  because  you  can  yet 
have  little  comfort  in  conversation,  and  all  things  will  seem 
strange  unto  you.  Remember  the  camel's  back,  and  be  not 
troubled  for  anything  that,  otherwise,  would  trouble  your 
patience  here.  Be  courteous  and  civil  to  all ;  put  on  a  decent 
boldness,  and  avoid  pudor  rusticus,  not  much  known  in 
France.  Hold  firm  to  the  Protestant  Religion,  and  be  dili- 
gent in  going  to  church  when  you  have  any  little  knowledge 
of  the  language.  .  .  .  Yiew  and  understand  all  notable  build- 
ings and  places  in  Bordeaux  or  near  it,  and  take  a  draught 
thereof,  as  also  the  ruined  Amphitheatre,  but  these  at  your 
leisure." 

This  was  at  "  honest  Tom's  '^  first  start,  but  he  soon 
grew  proficient  in  the  French  language  and  customs. 
He  seems  to  have  lived  the  longest  part  of  his  time 
with  an  apothecary  in  Saintes.  His  father  was 
anxious  lest  his  youth  should  lead  him  to  take  too 
much  violent  exercise  ;  "  be  temperate,"  he  says,  "  and 
stir  little  in  the  hot  season."  His  parents  were 
anxious  he  should  be  happy,  and  they  pressed  him  to 
take  lessons  in  singing  and  dancing,  at  their  expense. 
But  the  poor  boy  was  home-sick  for  Norwich,  and  we 
find  him  the  victim  of  a  settled  "  mallencholy,"  for 
which  it  seemed  to  him  that  the  air  of  Norfolk  should 
be  prescribed.  Discipline,  however,  must  be  main- 
tained, and  Tom  had  to  wear  out  his  year,  and  more 


v.]  LAST  YEARS  143 

than  a  year,  among  the  alien  French.  His  father 
advises,  as  a  cure  for  his  low  spirits,  that  he  should 
"  learn  handsome  songs  and  airs,  not  by  book,  but  by 
the  ear  as  you  shall  hear  them  sung."  But  the  best 
music  for  ^'  honest  Tom "  seems  to  have  been  the 
announcement,  which  came  at  last,  in  March  1662, 
that  he  might  pack  up  his  boxes  and  come  home  by 
Nantes  and  Paris.  On  the  27th  of  April,  "  we  came 
unto  the  great  city,  and,  as  the  French  will  have  it, 
the  little  world  of  Paris,"  says  the  boy  in  the  very 
intelligent  and  lucid  journal  which  he  kept  for  his 
anxious  parents'  entertainment. 

Edward,  now  B.A.  of  Trinity,  was  doing  well  at 
Cambridge,  and  in  September  of  the  year  in  which 
Tom  came  back  from  France,  the  parents  allowed  the 
brothers  to  take  a  trip  together  for  pleasure  into 
Derbyshire.  They  wrote  a  capital  account  of  their 
adventures,  their  father  being  solicitous  that  they 
should  early  practise  to  write,  so  as  to  have  "  a  good 
pen  and  style."  Here  is  a  little  touch  in  their  journal 
that  is  picturesque  in  itself,  and  valuable  as  showing 
that  their  home  was  loved  by  them  both.  After  a 
delightful  fortnight,  closely  packed  with  pleasures, 

"  to  consumate  all,  that  famous  spire  of  Norwich  presents 
itself  to  our  view,  Christ  Church  high  spire,  the  old  famous 
castle,  eight  and  thirty  goodly  churches,  the  fields  about  it 
and  the  stately  gardens  in  it,  did  so  lessen  our  opinion  of  any 
[other  place]  we  had  seen,  that  it  seemed  to  deride  our  ramb- 
ling folly,  and  forced  anew  admiration  from  us  of  those  things 
which,  with  their  often  view  had  dalled  our  conceptions  and 
due  estimation  of  their  worth.  .  .  .  Let  any  stranger  find  me 
out  80  pleasant  a  county,  such  good  ways,  large  heath,  three 
such  places  as  Norwich,  Yar.,  and  Lynn,  in  any  county  of 
England,  and  I  '11  be  once  again  a  vagabond  to  visit  them." 


144  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

Tom,  in  spite  of  the  Frencli  business,  went  back  to 
Cambridge  with  Edward,  and  in  July  1663  we  find 
their  father  congratulating  both  on  their  advance  in 
their  studies,  though  with  a  playful  grimace  about  the 
cost,  "  they  have  proved  very  chargeable."  It  was  by 
this  time  fixed  that  Edward  should  be  a  doctor,  and  he 
took  his  decree  of  bachelor  of  physic  at  Cambridge. 
Being  nineteen  years  of  age,  he  now  came  back  to 
Norwich  to  continue  his  studies  under  his  father's  eye. 
From  New  Year's  Day  1664  the  young  mecUcus  kept 
a  diary  of  his  doings,  part  doubtless  of  his  father's 
careful  plan  for  training  him  to  be  a  man  of  letters 
like  himself;  it  is  preserved  for  a  great  part  of  the 
year,  and  it  enables  us  to  get  several  glimpses  of  the 
home  life  in  the  Browne  household,  until  in  February 
the  young  gentleman,  tired  of  so  much  dancing  by 
night  and  dissecting  by  day,  rides  up  to  London  to 
study  at  Surgeons'  Hall,  where  he  is  handsomely 
entertained,  doubtless  for  his  father's  sake,  by  the 
eminent  Dr.  Windet.  A  daughter  of  Browne's,  whose 
Christian  name  seems  to  be  lost,  had  by  this  time 
married  Sir  Charles  Cotterell,  and  Edward  is  made 
much  of  at  his  sister's  "  house  in  St.  James'  Park, 
handsomely  built  on  a  piece  of  ground,  which  the  king 
gave  to  Sir  Charles."  In  March,  after  riding  all  night 
"  through  that  pleasant  county  of  Essex,"  Edward  is 
back  at  Norwich,  and  resumes  his  former  course  of 
life,  dancing,  dissecting,  going  to  church,  and  prescrib- 
ing for  his  father's  patients  ;  and  in  April  starting  for 
France,  on  the  medical  grand  tour,  just  as  his  father 
had  done  more  than  thirty  years  before. 

In  agreement  with  the  kindly  practice  of  the  family, 
Edward  begins  even  before  he  sets  foot  in  Calais  to 


v.]  LAST  YEARS  145 

write  to  Ms  people  at  home.  If  this  were  the  bio- 
graphy of  Edward  Browne  and  not  of  his  father,  his 
delightful  letters,  full  of  ardour  and  keen  observation, 
excellently  written,  too,  with  a  flowing  pen,  and  not 
with  the  habitual  pedantic  stick  of  the  travelling 
student  of  that  age,  would  enrich  the  narrative  with 
an  abundance  of  touches.  We  can  only  dwell  on  the 
kindliness  of  the  boy  who  supplies  to  his  father  exactly 
the  medical  and  antiquarian  gossip  which  he  knows  he 
will  enjoy.  And  throughout  his  travels,  Edward  is 
staunch  in  his  devotion  to  home ;  "  I  prefer  our  little 
garden  at  Norwich  before  that  of  Luxembourg  in 
Paris."  The  really  exciting  news  is  that  he  meets 
with  old  Guy  Patin,  who  welcomed  Religio  Medici  so 
many  years  before,  and  he  must  give  his  father  all  the 
account  of  him  he  can.  But  Browne,  for  some  reason, 
required  the  services  of  his  eldest  son  at  home,  and  a 
letter  telling  Edward  that  he  cannot  be  spared  any 
later  than  Michaelmas  puts  the  lad  "into  doleful  dumps, 
and  spoils  all  the  fine  chimeras  and  geographical  ideas 
that  I  had  formed  in  my  brain  of  seeing  Spain,  Italy, 
Germany,  and  I  cannot  tell  how  many  countries." 
But  this  was  only  postponed,  for  Edward  Browne  was 
destined  to  be  one  of  the  great  travellers  of  his  age. 
Even  now,  he  overpersuaded  the  indulgence  at  home, 
and  got  leave  in  October,  instead  of  coming  back  to 
Norwich,  to  pass  down  into  Italy  and  spend  the 
winter  in  Rome,  Naples,  and  Venice.  He  did  not  find 
his  way  back  to  Norwich,  indeed,  until  the  autumn  of 
1665,  when  he  firmly  promises,  in  return  for  so  much 
indulgence,  to  spend  a  great  deal  of  his  time  —  all  the 
winter  —  in  distilling  and  dissecting  for  his  father. 
His  last  act  in  Paris  was  to  try  to  arrange  for  a  French 


146  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

translation  of  the  Vulgar  Errors  to  be  undertaken  by 
a  M.  Pierre  Briot.  Thomas  Browne  was  interested  in 
thisj  and  sent  Edward  copies  of  the  third  and  fourth 
editions  of  the  book,  but  nothing  came  of  it. 

At  least  as  early  as  1651,  and  while  he  was  engaged 
in  writing  the  Vulgar  Errors,  Browne  had  come  into 
communication,  one  has  a  difficulty  in  surmising  how, 
with  an  Icelandic  naturalist,  Theodor  Jonsson  (Theo- 
dorus  Jonas),  who  was  minister  of  the  parish  of 
Hitterdal.  It  appears  that  every  year,  at  that  time, 
a  vessel  passed  between  Iceland  and  Yarmouth,  and 
when  once  Browne  had  established  relations  with  his 
northern  friend,  punctual  correspondence,  in  Latin, 
was  carried  on  between  them,  for  more  than  twenty 
years.  Browne's  letters  are  lost ;  they  may  possibly 
lurk  in  the  drawers  of  a  smoke-dried  cabinet  in  some 
remote  Icelandic  parsonage,  but  some  of  those  written 
by  Jonsson  remain,  and  testify  to  Browne's  curiosity 
and  his  friend's  eagerness  to  gratify  it.  In  1663,  from 
particulars  supplied  him  by  Jonsson,  Browne  drew  up 
an  Account  of  Island,  alias  Iceland,  for  the  Eoyal 
Society,  in  the  course  of  which  he  speaks  of  his  '^  long 
acquaintance"  with  inhabitants  of  that  then  so  re- 
mote and  mysterious  country.  We  learn  from  Edward 
Browne's  diary  that  in  February  1664,  the  Brownes 
had  a  visit  in  Norwich  from  "  the  Bishop's  son  of 
Skalhault  in  Islande,"  from  whom  they  heard  "  many 
things  concerning  his  country."  The  Bishop  of 
Skalholt  at  that  time  was  Brynjolf  Gizursson,  one 
of  the  most  learned  Icelanders  of  his  age,  to  whose 
magnificent  collection  of  books  and  manuscripts  later 
scholarship  owes  a  great  debt.  It  is  very  interesting 
to  find  Browne  in  communication  with  the  cloistered 


v.]  LAST  YEARS  147 

intellectual  life  of  Iceland,  then  keeping  its  flame  alive 
in  an  almost  total  isolation.  The  centre  of  that  life, 
in  the  seventeenth  century,  was  Skalholt.^ 

It  is  with  the  greatest  regret  that  Thomas  Browne's 
biographer  is  now  forced  to  chronicle  the  most  culpable 
and  the  most  stupid  action  of  his  life.  In  doing  so, 
we  can  offer  ourselves  no  other  consolation  than  to  say 
that  his  head  and  not  his  heart  must  have  been  at 
fault.  By  a  curious  irony,  it  was  not  until  he  had 
just  passed  away,  in  honoured  old  age,  that  this  blot 
on  Browne's  record  was  made  generally  public,  in  an 
appendix  to  some  posthumous  tracts  of  Sir  Matthew 
Hale,  printed  in  1683.  That  strong,  harsh  judge  had 
condemned  two  unhappy  women  to  death  for  witch- 
craft at  the  Bury  St.  Edmunds  assizes  on  the  1st  of 
March  1664.  Among  the  appalling  stories  of  witch- 
trials,  none  was  more  shocking,  none  more  inexcusable 
than  that  which  resulted  in  the  hanging  of  Amy  Duny 
and  Rose  Cullender.     They  were  accused,  on  thirteen 

1  To  the  kindness  of  Sir  Archibald  Geikie  I  am  indebted  for 
the  proof  that  this  connection  with  Iceland  was  kept  up  by 
Thomas  Browne  much  longer  than  has  hitherto  been  known. 
Among  the  manuscript  correspondence  in  the  archives  of  the 
Royal  Society,  there  exists  a  letter  from  Edward  Browne  to 
the  Secretary,  Dr.  Henry  Oldenburg,  in  which  he  says  :  "My 
father  having  divers  years  sent  into  Iceland,  and  received  at 
several  times  some  natural  curiosities  and  answers  to  his 
inquiries  from  a  learned  divine  there,  Theodorus  Jonas  —  one 
of  what  letters  was  formerly  [in  1663]  communicated  to  the 
R.  S.  by  the  hands  of  Sir  Samuel  Tuke  —  this  year  was  brought 
him"  some  specimens  of  lava  and  a  lump  of  sulphur  from 
Mount  Hekla,  which  Edward  Browne  forwards  for  inspection. 
The  letter  is  undated,  but  Oldenburg  has  docketed  it  "Reed. 
October  10,  1673."  The  original  manuscript  of  Thomas  Browne's 
communication  of  1663,  published  in  the  Posthumous  Works, 
has  not  been  preserved  in  the  Royal  Society. 


148  SIE  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

counts,  of  practising  sorcery  to  the  hurt  of  the  children 
of  their  neighbours.  The  whole  thing,  patently,  was 
a  piece  of  village  malice  ;  it  was  traced  back  to  a  sordid 
quarrel  about  some  herrings.  But  a  wretched  woman, 
proved  to  be  of  the  worst  character,  swore  that  she 
had  long  suspected  Eose  Cullender  of  being  a  witch, 
and  so  had  hung  up  her  child's  blanket  in  the  chimney. 
In  the  morning  there  was  a  toad  in  the  blanket,  which 
she,  standing  beside  the  witch,  threw  into  the  fire, 
whereupon  it  "  made  a  great  and  horrible  noise,  and 
flashed  like  gunpowder,  and  went  off  like  a  pistol,  and 
then  became  invisible,  and  by  this  [Rose  Cullender] 
was  scorched  and  burnt  lamentably." 

For  this  monstrous  tale  the  witness  produced  no 
support,  but  it  was  taken  with  the  evidence  of  children 
who  had  had  fits,  and,  in  particular,  of  one  little  girl 
who  produced  a  glib  tale  of  taps  and  touches,  and 
pricks  with  pins,  but  whose  testimony  was  rejected  by 
the  very  prosecution.  Sir  Matthew  Hale,  though  an 
unflinching  judge,  was  in  this  case  extremely  dubious ; 
he  was  impressed  by  the  utter  worthlessness  of  the 
witnesses  and  of  their  flimsy  story.  Unhappily, 
Dr.  Thomas  Browne,  "  the  famous  physician  of  his 
time,"  was  in  court.  Some  of  Browne's  own  friends, 
such  as  Lord  Cornwallis  and  Sir  Edmund  Bacon,  with 
the  eminent  lawyer,  Serjeant  Keeling,  had  expressed 
their  belief  that  the  charges  against  the  two  women 
were  "  a  mere  imposture."  The  Lord  Chief  Baron,  in 
his  perplexity,  turned  to  Browne  as  his  last  resource, 
and  asked  him  "to  give  his  judgment  in  the  case." 
The  court  was  against  the  prosecution  ;  a  word  in  their 
favour,  or  silence  alone,  would  have  saved  the  lives  of 
the  miserable  women.     At  this  solemn  juncture  Browne 


v.]  LAST  YEAES  149 

"  declared,  that  he  was  clearly  of  opinion  that  the  fits 
were  natural,  but  heightened  by  the  Devil,  co-operating 
with  the  malice  of  the  witches,  at  whose  instance  he 
did  the  villanies."  He  added  that "  in  Denmark  there 
had  been  lately  a  great  discovery  of  witches,  who  used 
the  very  same  way  of  a£9.icting  persons,  by  conveying 
pins  into  them,  and  crooked,  as  these  pins  were,  with 
needles  and  nails."  He  solemnly  explained  his  opinion 
to  be  that  the  devil  had  co-operated  with  the  "  malice  " 
of  Amy  Duny  and  Eose  Cullender  to  stir  up  and  excite 
the  humours  of  the  children's  bodies  so  as  to  bring  on 
distempers  to  which  they  were  constitutionally  subject, 
heightening  these  natural  diseases  "  to  a  great  excess 
by  his  subtilty."  Whether  he  ultimately  had,  or  had 
not,  a  scruple  in  his  mind  as  to  the  wisdom  of  his 
judicial  opinion,  we  cannot  surmise.  But  he  made  a 
curious  entry  in  his  Commonplace  Book :  "  We  are  no 
way  doubtful  that  there  are  witches,  but  have  not  been 
always  satisfied  in  the  application  of  their  witchcrafts." 
It  is  probable  that  in  his  remarks  about  Denmark,  on 
which  he  laid  much  stress,  Browne  was  referring  to 
a  famous  witch-trial  which  had  taken  place  at  Kjoge, 
in  Zealand,  in  1662,  when  four  miserable  women  had 
been  burned  alive. 

Browne's  declaration  influenced  the  jury  against 
mercy.  We  are  told  that  "it  turned  back  the  scale, 
that  was  otherwise  inclining  to  the  favour  of  the 
accused  persons."  The  judge  still  hesitated,  but  "  put 
it  off  from  himself  as  much  as  he  could,"  resting  on 
Browne's  opinion.  Still  troubled  in  his  conscience. 
Sir  Matthew  Hale  finally  left  it  to  the  jury,  praying 
"that  the  great  God  of  Heaven  would  direct  their 
hearts  in  that  weighty  matter  " ;  but  it  was  the  opinion 


150  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

of  the  great  doctor  of  Norwich,  that  weighed  with 
them.  They  brought  in  Rose  Cullender  and  Amy 
Duny  guilty  upon  all  the  thirteen  several  indictments. 
They  were  hanged  at  Bury,  protesting  their  innocence, 
and  their  blood,  poor  creatures,  was  on  the  head  of 
the  author  of  Religio  Medici.  With  the  exception  of 
the  three  Exeter  witches  who  were  executed  in  1682, 
these  were  perhaps  the  last  persons  hanged  for  witch- 
craft in  England.  The  case  was  the  subject  of  protest 
almost  from  the  first,  and  was  much  used  by  those  who 
bravely  attacked  this  judicial  frenzy.  It  is  observable 
that  the  Eev.  Erancis  Hutchinson,  the  first  of  those 
who  openly  and  courageously  denounced  witch-trials 
as  one  of  "the  worst  corruptions  of  religion  and  the 
greatest  perversions  of  justice,"  was  a  child  at  Bury 
St.  Edmunds  when  this  ghastly  crime  was  committed. 
In  June  1665  Browne  had  a  curious  experience. 
His  house  in  St.  Peter's  stood  higher  than  any  of  its 
neighbours,  and  was  therefore  exposed  to  the  elements. 
During  a  terrific  thunder-storm  which  broke  over 
Norwich,  he,  "with  many  others,  saw  fire-balls  fly 
and  go  off  when  they  met  with  resistance.''  One  of 
these  fire-balls  carried  away  the  tiles  and  boards  of 
the  little  wooden  pinnacle  of  a  "  leucomb  "  ^  window 
in  the  doctor's  house,  breaking  against  it  with  a  report 
like  that  of  two  or  three  cannons.    A  curiously  similar 

1  This  word  is  not  in  Dr.  Murray's  Oxford  Dictionary,  and 
he  can  offer  me  no  elucidation  of  its  meaning.  Mr.  Austin 
Dobson,  however,  proposes  to  me  a  solution  which  is  very- 
ingenious,  and,  I  think,  almost  certainly  right.  He  suggests 
that  it  must  be  a  corruption  of  the  French  word  lucarne,  an 
openiag  in  the  roof  of  a  house  to  light  up  the  loft  or  garret. 
Browne  uses  it  several  times,  spelling  it  "leucome"  as  well 
as  "leucomb." 


V.J  LAST  YEARS  151 

phenomenon  had  occurred  in  1656,  when  the  storm  of 
"fire-balls"  was  succeeded  by  hail  that  broke  £3000 
worth  of  glass  in  Norwich.  On  each  occasion  the 
pranks  played  by  the  ignis  fulmineus  were  fantastic 
and  considerable,  but  "  all  this,  God  be  thanked ! 
without  mischief  unto  any  person." 

While  Edward  Browne  was  abroad,  and  was  writing 
home  to  his  father  his  extremely  full  and  interesting 
impressions  of  what  he  saw,  Tom,  the  second  son,  was 
hastily  distracted  from  his  Cambridge  studies  by  the 
breaking  out  of  the  Dutch  War.  He  was  now  eighteen 
years  of  age,  and  he  determined  to  go  up  to  London 
and  secure  a  commission  in  the  Navy.  He  seems, 
from  a  phrase  in  one  of  his  father's  letters  of  November 
1664,  to  have  taken  this  step  very  abruptly ;  Browne, 
not  objecting,  but  full  of  paternal  anxiety,  writes  to 
him  to  "  do  nothing  rashly  but  as  you  find  just  grounds 
for  your  advantage,  which  will  hardly  be,  at  the  best 
deservings,  without  good  and  faithful  friends.  No 
sudden  advantage  for  raw,  though  dangerous,  services. 
God  and  good  friends  advise  you.  Be  sober  and  com- 
placent. If  you  could  quit  periwigs  it  would  be  better 
and  more  for  your  credit."  He  suggests  that  Tom 
might  be  learning  Latin  at  his  odd  moments,  which, 
as  advice  for  a  hot  lad,  with  one  foot  at  sea  and  one  on 
shore,  seems  a  little  excessive.  Mrs.  Browne,  ever  the 
worst  of  spellers,  forwards  in  haste  a  "  buf  cotte  "  to 
Tom  by  the  "choch,''  and  entreats  him  to  "bee  suer 
to  spand"  as  few  "monyes"  as  he  can.  Both  parents 
are  all  in  a  flutter  over  this  bold  duckling  who  has 
taken  so  suddenly  to  the  water,  but  "I  besich  God 
bles  and  dereckt  you,"  says  loving  Dorothy  Browne. 
Honest   Tom   had  no  difficulty  in   getting  his  com- 


152  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

mission;  and  on  the  21st  of  December  arrived  at 
Portsmouth,  and  attached  himself  to  the  fleet  of 
Admiral  Sir  Jeremiah  Smith.  It  was  not  until  the 
6th  of  January  1665  that  he  set  sail  from  Spithead, 
with  a  last  agitated  postscript  from  his  father  to  be 
sure  and  not  forget  to  wear  flannel  next  his  skin. 
Those  at  home  "pray  for  their  pretty  brother  daily." 
^Fragments  of  Tom  Browne's  log  are  extant,  and 
offer  a  very  interesting  record  of  a  young  officer's 
experience  on  board  a  battle-ship  in  war  time.  His 
vessel  was  the  Mountague,  a  ship  of  the  third  class, 
which  accompanied  the  rest  of  the  fleet  to  Spain,  and 
anchored  off  Cadiz,  watching  for  the  enemy.  He  was 
transferred  to  the  Foresight,  and  passed  up  the  Mediter- 
ranean. In  September  1665  he  distinguished  himself 
in  the  Earl  of  Sandwich's  capture  of  the  Dutch  fleets 
at  Bergen,  in  Norway,  and  took  part  in  all  the  battles 
of  1666.  In  May  1667,  on  board  the  Marie  Rose,  he 
formed  part  of  the  convoy  which  conducted  thirty- 
eight  merchant-vessels  up  to  Plymouth  Sound.  He 
was  now  a  lieutenant,  and  his  record  had  been  an 
admirable  one.  Although  he  was  but  twenty-one 
years  of  age,  he  was  officially  described  as  "  a  sober, 
studious,  courageous,  and  diligent  person,"  and  no  one 
in  all  the  fleet  was  like  him,  "  so  civil,  observing,  and 
diligent  to  his  charge,  with  the  reputation  and  love 
of  all  the  ship."  Those  who  wrote  home  made  his 
father's  heart  swell  with  pride  by  the  confident  pre- 
diction that  without  doubt  Tom  would  "make  a 
famous  man,  and  a  reputation  to  his  country."  After 
the  battle  of  Bergen,  Lord  Sandwich  called  Lieutenant 
Browne  to  him,  and  gave  him  the  highest  commenda- 
tion.    He  said  that  he  was  "  the  only  man  who  stuck 


v.]  LAST  YEARS  153 

closely  and  boldly"  to  his  captain  to  the  last,  after 
so  many  of  his  men  were  killed,  and  that  "he  could 
not  have  well  known  what  to  do  without  him." 
Tom  had  also  become  a  close  reader  at  sea,  making  a 
study  of  Homer  and  Juvenal,  and  of  Lucan,  who  was 
particularly  to  his  taste.  The  proud  and  happy  father 
was  certain  that  his  beloved  Tom  was  "  like  to  proceed 
not  only  a  noble  navigator,  but  a  great  scholar,  which 
will  be  much  to  your  honour  and  my  satisfaction  and 
content."  But  now,  at  the  threshold  of  so  glittering  a 
career,  a  curtain  falls,  and  we  never  hear  again  of  this 
gallant  and  admirable  young  man.  The  last  news  is 
that,  in  the  summer  of  1667,  Sir  Thomas  Allen  dis- 
suades him  from  leaving  the  sea,  which  his  gifts  and 
opportunities  are  tempting  him  to  do.  The  admiral 
tries  "  by  encouragement  and  preferment "  to  hold  him 
to  the  fleet.  We  only  know  that  he  died,  but  when 
or  where  or  how  is  matter  of  pure  conjecture,  and  was 
probably  unknown  even  to  his  heart-broken  father  and 
mother.     That  he  was 

"  Summoned  to  the  deep, 
He,  he  and  all  his  mates,  to  keep 
An  incommunicable  sleep  " 

is  in  the  highest  degree  probable. 

During  Tom's  three  years'  absence  at  sea,  not  much 
of  importance  seems  to  have  happened  to  the  household 
at  Norwich.  In  December  1664,  Browne  was  admitted 
an  honorary  fellow  of  the  College  of  Physicians,  re- 
ceiving six  months  later  his  diploma.  He  was  now  in 
relation  with  the  Koyal  Society,  of  which  however, 
as  has  been  said,  he  never  became  a  fellow.  Eobert 
Boyle,  in  particular,  applauded  his  "integrity  in  re- 
porting, as  well  as  capacity  in  making  experiments," 


154  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

but  Browne  was  not  invited  to  join  the  body  of  pbilo- 
sopliers.  In  September  1665  the  plague  came  to 
Norwich,  and  Browne  hurried  the  ladies  of  his  house- 
hold off  to  Claxton,  he  himself  intending,  if  the 
epidemic  grew  really  serious,  "  to  remove  three  or 
four  miles  off,'^  and  visit  his  country  patients  from 
that  point.  I  cannot  help  conjecturing  that  he  took 
this  opportunity  to  make  the  only  foreign  excursion 
of  which  we  hear  in  his  mature  days.  Of  this  we 
should  know  nothing  if  Johann  Grtindahl  had  not 
stated  that  he  met  Browne  at  the  house  of  a  friend,  at 
Vorburg,^  and  that  he  was  thus  led  to  read  and  trans- 
late his  works.  Grtindahl's  Dutch  edition  of  the  works 
belongs  to  the  year  1668,  but  his  version  of  the  Religio 
Medici  is  somewhat  earlier.  There  is  evidence  of  a 
recrudescence  in  public  curiosity  about  Browne  in 
Germany,  France,  and  Holland  in  1665,  and  several 
persons  are  more  or  less  vaguely  described  as  trans- 
lating, or  talking  about  translating,  his  works,  at  that 
time.  Perhaps  all  this  was  stimulated  by  his  visit  to 
the  Continent,  of  which,  however,  all  details  seem  to  be 
lost.  The  plague,  meanwhile,  which  had  been  brought 
from  Yarmouth,  raged  at  Norwich,  and  over  three  thou- 
sand citizens  died  within  a  year.  It  did  not  completely 
cease  until  1667.  It  was  followed,  in  1669,  by  a  terrible 
epidemic  of  smallpox,  which  attacked  three  hundred 
Norwich  households  in  one  fortnight.  These  events 
must  have  kept  the  old  physician  amply  occupied,  and 
may  partly  account  for  his  apparent  neglect  of  literature. 

1  But  what  is  "  Vorburg  "  ?  Is  Warburg  intended?  A  vorhurg 
is  simply  a  suburb.  Does  Griindahl  mean  that  he  met  Browne  at 
Voorburg,  the  village  just  outside  The  Hague,  on  the  Leyden  road, 
where  (by  the  way)  Spinoza  was  at  that  time  residing  ? 


r.]  LAST  YEARS  155 

The  elder  of  Browne's  sons  had  now  entirely  devoted 
himself  to  science.  He  had  developed  early  into  a 
man  of  considerable  scholarship  and  unusual  mental 
energy.  According  to  Wilkin,  he  was  incorporated 
of  Merton  College,  Oxford,  in  June  1666,  and  took 
his  degree  of  doctor  of  physic  on  the  4th  of  July 
1667,  being  immediately  afterwards  elected  a  fellow 
of  the  Eoyal  Society.  It  is  probable  that  he  resided 
at  Norwich,  helping  his  father  in  his  practice,  until 
August  1668,  when  the  passion  for  travel,  which  was 
innate  in  Edward  Browne,  seized  him  with  violence. 
He  went  over  from  Yarmouth  to  Rotterdam,  ap- 
parently intending  to  go  to  Amsterdam,  and  shortly 
return,  but  once  abroad,  the  genius  of  wandering  took 
possession  of  him.  He  wrote  very  copious  and  punc- 
tual letters  to  his  father,  a  large  number  of  which 
have  been  printed,  while  others  exist  in  manuscript. 
At  Amsterdam  he  heard  that  a  translation  of  the 
Vulgar  Errors  into  Low  Dutch  was  completed,  and 
already  being  printed.  He  went  on  to  Brussels,  and 
is  next  heard  from  at  Vienna,  proposing  to  go  to 
Venice  by  way  of  Hungary.  His  father  was  distressed 
at  his  making  excursions  "  so  remote  and  chargeable," 
but  sends  long  letters  full  of  local  news,  most  of  which, 
marvellously,  seem  to  have  reached  their  destination. 
"Myself  and  all  your  friends  do  heartily  wish  you 
would  not  so  much  as  think  "  of  prolonging  the  journey 
to  Poland,  Hungary,  or  Turkey.  "  For  many  reasons, 
we  all  wish  you  in  England''  (December  15,  1668), 
which  may  be  an  allusion  to  the  disappearance  or  death 
of  Tom.  "  Believe  it,  no  excursion  into  Pol.,  Hung.,  or 
Turkey  adds  advantage  or  reputation  to  a  scholar." 

But  Edward  had  the  bit  between  his  teeth,  and  no 


156  SIR   THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

entreaties  could  induce  him  to  return.  A  suggestion 
that  he  should  inquire  into  the  mineral  wealth  of 
Hungary  decided  him.  In  April  he  got  back  to  Vienna 
after  a  harsh  and  laborious  but  very  successful  journey 
through  the  Hungarian  and  Carinthian  mining  pro- 
vinces. By  June  he  was  in  Venice,  and  was  being  urged 
by  Lord  Leslie  to  undertake  a  tour  in  Turkey.  This 
he  refuses  to  do,  but  his  anxious  father  (June  25) 
entreats  him  to  "  maintain  a  tranquillitas  and  smooth- 
ness of  mind,  which  will  better  conserve  to  health." 
Certainly  Edward,  though  not  tranquil,  did  everything 
he  could  to  amuse  and  please  his  parents,  sending 
home,  among  other  presents,  a  hortus  siccus  of  six 
hundred  species  of  plants  from  the  garden  at  Padua. 
All  this  journeying,  however,  was  a  very  great  expense 
to  his  father,  of  which  Edward  is  dutifully  cognisant, 
and  full  of  "thanks  for  your  long-continued  indul- 
gence." On  the  way  back,  however,  in  spite  of  all,  he 
made  a  bolt  for  the  irresistible  East,  and  passed 
through  Bohemia  and  Thessaly  into  Turkey.  At  this 
Thomas  Browne  was  much  displeased,  and  alarmed, 
and  when  the  incorrigible  traveller  returned  to 
Vienna  in  October,  he  found  letters  from  his  father 
commenting  severely  on  his  "  rashness  and  obstinate 
folly."     Edward's  coaxing  reply  is  very  amusing :  — 

"I  have  divers  things  to  write  to  you,  sir,  concerning 
Turkia ;  but  I  will  not  trouble  you,  sir,  too  much  at  once. 
I  know,  sir,  that  you  cannot  but  reasonably  be  offended  with 
my  long  stay  abroad,  especially  in  countries  of  small  litera- 
ture, but  I  hope  that  your  displeasure  will  not  continue,  and 
that  you  will  add  this  to  the  rest  of  your  great  goodness  and 
indulgence  to  me,  to  pardon  my  rashness,  and  the  expense  I 
have  put  you  to.  My  duty  to  my  most  dear  mother,  and 
love  to  my  sisters  and  friends." 


v.]  LAST  YEARS  157 

Thomas  Browne,  finding  that  Edward  had  observed 
so  many  novel  and  curious  objects,  had  written  to  him 
to  suggest  that  he  should  contribute  to  the  Proceedings 
of  the  Eoyal  Society.  Edward  lost  no  time  in  writing 
from  Vienna,  on  the  6th  of  December  1668,  to  the 
secretary  of  the  Society,  Dr.  Oldenbnrg,  with  whom  it 
appears  he  had  as  yet  no  personal  acquaintance.  He 
told  him  of  his  opportunities,  and  offered  his  services. 
This  letter  was  read  before  the  Society  on  the  31st 
of  December,  and  approved  of.  Oldenburg,  although 
overwhelmed  with  correspondence,  warmly  encouraged 
Browne  to  communicate  his  mineralogical  observations, 
and  in  January  he  forwarded,  as  was  the  wont  of  the 
Eoyal  Society  in  such  cases,  a  long  string  of  scientific 
queries.  During  the  year  1669  Edward  was  in  con- 
stant correspondence  with  Oldenburg.  There  exist  in 
the  archives  of  the  Eoyal  Society  a  large  number 
of  letters  from  Edward  Browne,  and  among  them  I 
have  been  so  fortunate  as  to  discover  four  notes  from 
Sir  Thomas  Browne  himself.  These  are  dated  May  31, 
July  10  and  28,  and  October  25,  1669.  They  are  of 
the  nature  of  covering  letters  and  contain  nothing 
of  particular  personal  interest.  The  first  describes 
Edward's  tour  in  Hungary,  and  in  all  the  writer  is 
most  anxious  to  emphasise  his  son's  activity  and  merit. 
They  are  all  docketed  by  Oldenburg,  —  to  whom  they 
were  addressed,  "  at  his  house  in  the  Palmal  in  St. 
James's  Field,"  —  as  written  by  Dr.  T.  Browne,  "  con- 
cerning his  son's  mineral  collections  in  his  travels." 

In  the  third  of  these  letters,  Thomas  Browne  says, 
"I  shall,  God  willing,  continue  to  serve  [the  Eoyal 
Society]  in  any  way  of  my  mean  power."  This  is  a 
strong  hint,  but  Oldenburg  does  not  respond  to  it. 


168  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

There  is  a  somewhat  curious  change  of  tone  in  the 
notes.  In  May,  Oldenburg  is  his  "  worthy  friend,"  but 
we  gain  the  impression  that  the  secretary  thought 
Browne  too  eager,  and  snubbed  him.  In  each  letter 
the  old  physician's  tone  becomes  less  easy  and  familiar, 
and  in  October  he  is  extremely  deprecatory,  and,  with 
almost  too  much  respect,  he  signs  himself  Oldenburg's 
"very  humble  servant."  The  discovery  of  these  docu- 
ments, of  slight  value  in  themselves,  adds  to  our 
impression  that  Browne  was  exceedingly  anxious  to 
be  elected  to  the  Eoyal  Society,  as  his  son  Edward 
Browne,  and  his  disciple  Henry  Power,  had  been,  but 
that  the  Council  was  determined  that  he  should  not 
have  their  diploma,  and  resolutely  disregarded  his 
hints  and  his  civilities.-^ 

In  spite  of  all  his  protestations,  Edward  Browne 
made  no  effort  to  hasten  home  from  Vienna ;  and 
it  was  not  until  Christmas  1669,  after  an  absence  of 
nearly  eighteen  months,  that  he  presented  himself 
at  last,  in  a  vessel  from  Cuxhaven,  on  the  shores  of 
Norfolk.  He  published  an  interesting  account  of  his 
travels  in  1673,  and  another  in  1677,  as  well  as  a 
History  of  the  Cossacks  in  1672.  His  various  writings 
were  collected  in  1685.  His  communications  to  the 
Philosophical  Transactions  of  the  E-oyal  Society  were 
frequent  from  1669  onwards ;  and  Thomas  Browne 
had  every  reason  to  be  proud  of  his  energetic  and 
accomplished  son,  who  now  settled  down  to  help  him 

1  My  best  thanks  are  due  to  Sir  Archibald  Geikie  for  his  kind- 
ness in  allowing  me  to  examine  and  transcribe  these  documents, 
which  have  not  been  printed,  nor,  so  far  as  I  know,  described, 
even  by  Wilkin.  The  very  old-fashioned  handwriting  of  Thomas 
Browne  offers  a  curious  contrast  to  the  trim,  modern,  and  legible 
style  of  his  son  Edward. 


v.]  LAST  YEAES  169 

in  his  medical  practice  at  Norwich,  relieved  by  fre- 
quent excursions  to  London  and  to  the  Continent. 
Later  on,  from  1675,  Edward  took  a  London  practice 
and  a  house  in  Salisbury  Court,  becoming,  partly,  it 
is  said,  through  his  intimacy  with  one  of  the  king's 
mistresses,  physician  to  Charles  ii.  He  had,  however, 
married  in  1672  Henrietta  Terne,  daughter  of  the 
celebrated  medical  lecturer,  Christopher  Terne  (1620- 
1673),  and  seems  to  have  enjoyed  a  domestic  happiness 
like  that  of  his  own  father.  Long  before  his  own 
death,  Thomas  Browne  had  the  pleasure  of  seeing  his 
beloved  son  take  his  place  as  one  of  the  most  pros- 
perous and  distinguished  physicians  of  his  time.  To 
us,  Edward  Browne  has  become  shadowy  and  unin- 
teresting, but  it  is  probable  that  to  the  majority  of 
fashionable  people  in  London,  Sir  Thomas  Browne 
was  chiefly  known,  at  the  time  of  his  death,  as  the 
father  of  the  celebrated  traveller  and  man  of  science, 
Dr.  Edward  Browne  of  Salisbury  Court. 

While  Edward  Browne  was  abroad,  he  directed 
some  of  his  letters  to  the  care  of  his  sister  Anne,  who 
was  then  living,  or  staying,  with  some  relatives  of 
the  name  of  Barker,  in  Clerkenwell.  The  Hon.  Henry 
Fairfax,  second  son  of  Thomas,  Viscount  Fairfax  of 
Emly,  had  married  Frances  Barker ;  she  is  the  "  Madam 
Fairfax,"  of  Edward's  correspondence.  Henry  Fairfax, 
who  had  died  in  1656,  had  left  a  son,  Henry,  and 
in  1669  he  married  Sir  Thomas  Browne's  daughter 
Anne.  Madam  Fairfax  died  in  the  same  year,  and  we 
may  conjecture  that  it  was  the  breaking  up  of  the 
home  in  Clerkenwell  which  led  Henry  and  Anne 
Fairfax  to  pay  a  lengthy  visit  to  her  parents  in 
Norwich,  where  their  first  child.  Barker  Fairfax,  was 


160  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

born,  and  died  in  the  course  of  1670.  From  Anne 
Browne  are  lineally  descended  the  present  heads  of 
two  noble  families,  the  Earls  of  Buchan  and  the 
Barons  Erskine.  Some  part  of  her  life  was  spent  by 
Anne  Browne  in  Erance,  in  company  with  one  of  her 
sisters. 

A  considerable  stir  was  caused  in  !N"orfolk  by  a  tour 
through  the  county  taken  by  the  king  and  queen  in 
the  autumn  of  1671.  On  the  28th  of  September, 
accompanied  by  the  Dukes  of  York,  Monmouth,  and 
Buckingham,  the  royal  party  entered  Norwich.  At 
Trowse  Bridge  they  were  met  by  the  mayor,  with  the 
regalia,  all  the  sheriffs  and  the  aldermen,  new-clothed 
in  scarlet,  and  the  leading  citizens,  of  whom  Dr. 
Browne  was  one.  The  civic  procession  turned  and 
conducted  their  Majesties  to  the  Duke's  Palace,  where 
they  were  magnificently  entertained  by  Henry,  Lord 
Howard  of  Castle  Eising,  a  man  who  represented  all 
that  was  most  enlightened  and  intellectual  in  the 
society  of  Norfolk.  He  was  the  brother  of  the  reign- 
ing duke,  but  a  man  of  infinitely  greater  energy  and 
resource ;  he  succeeded  him  as  sixth  duke  in  1677. 
He  held  a  kind  of  state  in  Norwich  every  year,  and 
accounts  of  his  liberal  and  splendid  entertainments 
occur  in  Edward  Browne's  journals.  On  the  29th  of 
September  the  king  proceeded  to  the  Cathedral,  where 
he  was  received  by  the  bishop,  and  was  sung  into 
church  with  an  anthem.  After  service,  he  rode  from 
the  Guild  Hall  to  the  New  Hall,  and  was  there  feasted 
by  the  city.  After  the  banquet,  the  king  expressed 
his  wish  to  knight  a  prominent  citizen,  as  a  memento 
of  his  visit  to  Norwich.  He  was  proceeding  to  confer 
this  honour  on  Thomas  Thacker,  the  mayor,  when  that 


v.]  LAST  YEARS  161 

worthy  modestly  and  humbly  begged  that  it  might  be 
given  to  the  most  eminent  inhabitant  of  the  city,  in- 
dicating the  author  of  Religio  Medici.  The  king  was 
graciously  pleased  to  consent,  and  the  physician,  kneel- 
ing, rose  Sir  Thomas  Browne.^ 

This  royal  visit  to  Norfolk  had  the  consequence  of 
bringing  Browne  into  personal  contact  with  an  old  and 
valued  correspondent.  The  king  went  back  to  New- 
market, and  during  the  royal  visit,  the  Lord  Chamber- 
lain, the  Earl  of  Arlington,  invited  John  Evelyn  to  join 
the  revels.  While  he  was  there.  Lord  Howard  came 
over  to  Newmarket,  and  must  needs  have  Evelyn  go 
back  with  him  to  Norwich ;  he  added,  as  an  inducement, 
that  he  should  see  "  that  famous  scholar  and  physician," 
the  author  of  the  Vulgar  Errors.  This  was  more  than 
Evelyn  could  resist,  and  accordingly,  on  the  17th  of 
October,  "  thither  went  my  Lord  and  I,  alone,  in  his 
flying  chariot  with  six  horses."  Arriving  at  the  Ducal 
Palace  in  Norwich,  Lord  Howard  "  made  very  much  " 
of  his  distinguished  guest,  and,  indeed,  fairly  tired  him 
out  with  all  that  he  made  him  do  in  the  way  of  sight- 
seeing. On  the  morning  of  the  18th,  Evelyn  was 
taken  by  Lord  Howard  to  wait  upon  Sir  Thomas 
Browne,  and  his  entry  in  his  Diary  is  a  precious 
vignette  of  the  surroundings  of  our  physician's  life  in 
Norwich :  — 

1  From  a  letter  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne  to  his  son  Edward  it 
would  appear,  though  there  is  some  ambiguity  in  the  language, 
that  the  king  came  to  Browne's  house,  and  witnessed  the  dis- 
section of  a  dolphin.  There  would  be  nothing  extraordinary 
in  this,  for  Charles  ii.'s  curiosity  about  all  scientific  experi- 
ments was  notorious,  and  we  can  have  no  question  that 
Browne's  reputation  had  reached  him  before  he  came  to 
Norwich. 

M 


162  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

"  His  whole  house  and  garden  being  a  paradise  and  cabinet 
of  rarities,  and  that  of  the  best  collection,  especially  medals, 
books,  plants,  and  natural  things.  Amongst  other  curiosities, 
Sir  Thomas  had  a  collection  of  the  eggs  of  all  the  fowl  and 
birds  he  could  procure,  that  country  (especially  the  promon- 
tory of  Norfolk)  being  frequented,  as  he  said,  by  several 
kinds  which  seldom  or  never  go  farther  into  the  land,  as 
cranes,  storks,  eagles,  and  variety  of  water-fowl.  He  led  me 
to  see  all  the  remarkable  places  of  this  ancient  city,  being  one 
of  the  largest,  and  certainly,  after  London,  one  of  the  noblest 
of  England,  for  its  venerable  cathedral,  number  of  stately 
churches,  cleanness  of  the  streets,  and  buildings  of  flint  so 
exquisitely  headed  and  squared,  as  I  was  much  astonished  at ; 
but  he  told  me  they  had  lost  the  art  of  squaring  the  flints,  in 
which  they  so  much  excelled,  and  of  which  the  churches,  best 
houses  and  walls  are  built.  The  Castle  is  an  antique  extent 
of  ground,  which  now  they  call  Marsfield,  and  would  have 
been  a  fitting  area  to  have  placed  the  Ducal  Palace  in.  The 
suburbs  are  large,  the  prospects  sweet,  with  other  amenities, 
not  omitting  the  flower-gardens,  in  which  all  the  inhabitants 
excel." 

Next  day,  Evelyn  travelled  to  Euston,  and  so  back 
to  Newmarket.  It  does  not  appear  that  lie  ever  saw 
Browne  again. 

From  this  time  until  bis  death,  the  life  of  Sir 
Thomas  Browne  became  more  sequestered  than  ever. 
He  was  now  wealthy,  his  daughters  were  well  married, 
his  son  highly  prosperous ;  it  is  evident  that  he  with- 
drew from  the  active  part  of  his  profession,  and 
devoted  himself  more  and  more  entirely  to  literature 
and  science.  It  seems  that  he  grew  somewhat  pietistic ; 
and  it  is  to  these  years  that  we  must  attribute  the 
composition  of  A  Letter  to  a  Friend  and  Christian  Morals, 
in  whose  gravity  we  seem  to  have  proceeded  far  from 
the  sprightly  adolescence  of  Beligio  Medici.  In  1676 
we  find  Browne  warning   his    son  Edward  against 


v.]  LAST  YEARS  163 

yielding  to  the  fascination  of  Lucretius.  Of  the  De 
Herum  Natura,  which,  delighted  such  contemporaries  as 
Evelyn,  and  even  Jeremy  Taylor,  Sir  Thomas  Browne 
can  now  only  say,  "I  do  not  much  recommend  the 
reading  or  studying  of  it,  there  being  divers  impieties 
in  it,  and  'tis  no  credit  to  be  punctually  versed  in  it.'' 
Thomas  Tenison,  a  prodigy  of  the  Norwich  grammar 
school,  who  was  much  in  Sir  Thomas  Browne's  house- 
hold, and  who  had  already  cheerily  confuted  Hobbes, 
has  written  "  a  good  poem  "  against  the  Lucretians  of 
this  age,  in  imitation  of  the  De  Rerum  Natura,  "  in  a 
manuscript  dedicated  to  me."  This  was  the  Tenison 
who  was  afterwards  editor  of  Browne's  posthumous 
tracts,  and  from  1694  onwards  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury. 

About  1675,  a  new  inmate  of  the  house  at  Norwich 
was  Edward  Browne's  little  son,  Thomas,  now  three 
years  old.  The  London  air  did  not  suit  him  at 
Salisbury  Court,  and  the  grandparents  were  only  too 
glad  of  the  child's  company.  Erom  this  time  forward 
the  references  to  ^^  little  Tomey"  are  constant.  He 
"is  lively,  God  be  thanked.  He  lieth  with  Betty. 
She  takes  great  care  of  him,  and  gets  him  to  bed 
in  due  time,  for  he  riseth  early.  She  or  Erank  is 
fain  sometimes  to  play  him  asleep  with  a  fiddle. 
When  we  send  away  our  letters  he  scribbles  a  paper 
and  will  have  it  sent  to  his  sister,  and  sayeth  she  doth 
not  know  how  many  fine  things  there  are  in  Norwich." 
They  have  the  usual  fright  of  grandparents,  whenever 
Tomey  has  a  cold,  and  in  one  illness  Sir  Thomas 
Browne's  spelling,  usually  so  correct,  goes  all  to  pieces 
with  anxiety,  and  tells  us  that  the  child  is  "much 
batter  of  his  coffe."     In  1678,  Tomey  begins  to  go  to 


164  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

school,  "and  is  a  very  good  boy,  and  delights  his 
grandfather  when  he  comes  home."  He  grew  up  a 
worthy  scion  of  the  stock  he  came  from,  became  a 
physician  early,  and  would  doubtless  have  been  dis- 
tinguished, but  for  an  accident.  In  1710,  two  years 
after  his  father's  death,  he  was  thrown  from  his  horse 
and  died  of  the  injuries. 

Sir  Thomas  Browne's  health  began  to  fail  some 
years  before  his  death.  In  January  1679  he  had  a 
severe  illness,  which  had  scarcely  passed  away,  before 
a  fit  of  influenza  laid  the  household  low,  sparing, 
however,  little  Tomey.  Sir  Thomas's  long  letters  to 
his  son  Edward  are  full  of  local  news  and  scientific 
gossip,  but  say  very  little  about  his  own  doings.  We 
learn,  however,  that  both  grandparents  are  much 
exercised  about  getting  Tomey  breeched  against  the 
assizes,  he  being  now  "  a  beaux  tall  boy,  and  will  be 
much  a  man."  In  this  great  matter,  Tomey  himself 
is  superlatively  interested,  and  "  would  give  all  his 
stock  to  see  his  breeches,"  over  which  the  tailor 
culpably  dawdles.  So  life  went  gently  and  merrily 
on  in  the  Norwich  household,  until  Tomey  was  ten 
years  old,  the  grandfather  growing,  we  suppose,  ever 
a  little  quieter  and  weaker,  but  retaining  all  cheerful- 
ness and  his  intellectual  vivacity.  He  had  made 
his  will  in  December  1679,  but  it  was  not  until 
October  19, 1682,  that  a  sharp  attack  of  colic  carried 
him  off,  after  a  short  illness.  He  had  enjoyed  the 
great  pleasure  of  living  to  see  his  beloved  son 
Edward  made  physician  to  St.  Bartholomew's  Hospital 
at  the  express  desire  of  the  king.  This  appointment 
was  dated  the  7th  of  September,  and  news  of  it  must 
have  reached  Norwich  about  a  month  before  Browne's 


T.]  LAST  YEAES  165 

death.  It  is  a  curious  reflection  that  Sir  Thomas 
Browne,  who  seems  to  us  the  happiest  and  the  most 
prosperous  of  men,  suffered  from  an  occasional 
melancholy  in  which  he  longed  to  die.  He  could  even 
say,  "I  think  no  man  ever  desired  life,  as  I  have  some- 
times death."  He  had  written,  in  Religio  Medici,  that 
for  the  tail  of  the  snake  to  return  into  its  mouth 
precisely  at  the  day  of  a  man's  nativity,  "  is  indeed  a 
remarkable  coincidence."  It  occurred  in  his  own  case, 
for  he  died  on  his  seventy-seventh  birthday.  Lady 
Browne  survived  her  husband  until  February  24, 1685. 


CHAPTER  VI 

POSTHUMOUS   WRITINGS  — PERSONAL   CHARACTER- 
ISTICS 

After  1658  Sir  Thomas  Browne  published  nothing 
new,  although  he  was  frequently  called  upon  to  super- 
intend fresh  issues  of  his  earlier  works,  which  retained 
their  popularity  to  the  full.  Since  1659  these  had 
appeared  in  a  single  folio  volume,  of  which  an  edition 
was  corrected  by  the  author  in  1682,  just  before  his 
death.  The  last  imprint  of  Religio  Medici  seen  by  the 
author  was  called  the  eighth,  but  was  in  reality  at 
least  the  fourteenth.  The  Vulgar  Errors  had  been 
printed  five  times,  Urn-Burial  and  Tlie  Garden  of  Gyrus 
four  times,  before  the  death  of  Browne.  In  the  face 
of  so  remarkable  and  so  long  sustained  a  success,  it  is 
strange  that  he  refrained  from  fresh  publication  during 
the  last  quarter  of  a  century  of  his  life,  especially  as 
he  wrote  during  part  of  that  time  rather  abundantly. 
After  his  death,  a  large  quantity  of  manuscripts  came 
into  the  hands  of  Lady  Browne  and  her  son,  Edward, 
who  sought  in  vain  for  any  instructions  about  them. 
But  Sir  Thomas  had  never  said  what  he  wished  to  be 
done,  "  either  for  the  suppressing  or  the  publishing  of 
them.''  The  executors  placed  them,  as  they  were,  in 
the  hands  of  Thomas  Tenison.  It  is  possible  that 
Lady  Browne  had  scruples  against  publication,  for  it 

166 


CHAP.  VI.]  POSTHUMOUS   WRITINGS  167 

was  not  until  a  month  or  two  before  her  death,  that 
anything  fresh  appeared. 

At  length,  in  1684,  Tenison  produced  a  small  octavo, 
entitled  Certain  Miscellany  Tracts,  and  this  was  the 
earliest  instalment  of  Browne's  posthumous  writings. 
These  tracts  were  appended  to  the  WorTcs  in  1686,  and 
henceforth  formed  a  part  of  them.  Tenison  tells  us 
that  he  selected  them  out  of  many  disordered  papers, 
and  arranged  them  as  best  he  could.  We  gather  that 
they  had  all  been  sent  at  one  time  or  another,  in  the 
form  of  letters,  to  persons  such  as  Evelyn,  Dugdale, 
Lord  Yarmouth,  Sir  Nicholas  Bacon,  and  perhaps 
Edward  Browne.  They  are  thirteen  in  number,  and 
very  diverse  in  subject,  length,  and  importance. 
Most  of  them  were  obviously  written,  in  reply  to  the 
queries  of  friends,  in  what  Tenison  aptly  calls  "  those 
little  spaces  of  vacancy  which  [Browne]  snatched  from 
the  very  many  occasions  which  gave  him  hourly  in- 
terruption." In  several  instances,  we  can  trace  by 
internal  evidence  the  occasions  upon  which  the  par- 
ticular essays  were  written,  and  those  addressed  to 
Evelyn  on  gardens  and  to  Dugdale  on  the  fen-country 
have  already  been  mentioned  in  the  course  of  this 
narrative. 

The  important  treatise  on  ^^  Plants  mentioned  in 
Scripture"  is  almost  long  enough  to  form  a  little 
volume.  It  was  dedicated  to  Sir  Nicholas  Bacon, 
whose  passion  for  flowers  we  have  already  recorded. 
Erom  the  purely  zoological  essays  we  learn  that  that 
beautiful  bird  the  hoopoe  was  common  in  Norfolk  in 
Browne's  day,  so  common  that  the  naturalist  cannot 
understand  its  being  unfamiliar  to  a  correspondent 
in  another  part  of  England.     The   other   essays,  on 


168  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [caxp. 

cymbals,  on  rhopalic  (or  club-shaped)  verses,  on  the 
primitive  language,  on  the  fishes  eaten  by  our  Saviour 
after  His  resurrection,  on  artificial  mounts  or  barrows, 
and  on  the  site  of  Troy,  are  curious  and  trifling 
examples  of  the  wit  of  the  day,  not  very  important  to 
us  nor  highly  characteristic  of  the  genius  of  their 
author.  They  give  fresh  evidence,  if  we  needed  any, 
of  the  vast  range  of  Browne's  reading,  which  embraced 
at  least  six  modern  languages. 

In  more  than  one  of  these  miscellanies,  he  testifies 
to  his  admiration  for  Eabelais,  of  whom,  moreover,  he 
had  composed,  in  old  French,  an  imitation,  which  was 
printed  by  Wilkin:  this  is  a  miracle  of  obscure  in- 
genuity. Perhaps  the  most  amusing  of  all  these  tracts 
is  the  last,  "  Museum  Clausum,"  which  is  intended,  as 
Warburton  was  the  first  in  observing,  to  rival  Eabelais's 
catalogue  of  imaginary  volumes  in  the  library  of  St. 
Victor.^  Browne  draws  up  a  highly  entertaining  list 
of  books,  antiquities,  pictures,  and  rarities  of  several 
kinds,  "  scarce  or  never  "  seen  by  mortal  eye.  Among 
them  is  a  treatise  on  dreams  by  King  Mithridates  ;  a 
collection  of  the  writings  in  Hebrew,  Greek,  and  Latin 
of  an  imaginary  little  girl  of  eight  years  old  (this,  no 
doubt,  was  a  joke  at  the  expense  of  Maria  Schuur- 
man)  ;  the  works  of  Confucius,  translated  into  Spanish ; 
a  painting  of  Thyestes,  taken  at  the  moment  when  he 
was  told  at  table  that  he  had  just  eaten  a  piece  of  his 
own  son ;  a  battle  between  frogs  and  mice,  carved  upon 

1  It  appears  to  me  likely  that  Tract  viii.,  "  Of  Languages  " 
was  written  in,  or  soon  after,  1653,  when  the  publications  of 
Sir  Thomas  Urquhart  drew  attention,  not  merely  to  the  pecu- 
liarities of  the  style  of  Rabelais,  but  also  to  a  scheme  for  a 
universal  language.  Browne  had  probably  just  read  the  Logo- 
pandecteision  when  he  wrote  his  essay. 


VI.]  POSTHUMOUS   WRITINGS  169 

the  jaw-bone  of  a  pike;  and  a  transcendent  perfume 
made  of  all  the  richest  odorates  of  both  the  Indies, 
and  kept  in  a  box  made  of  the  Muschine  stone  of 
Marienburg.  All  these,  and  other  still  more  remark- 
able curiosities,  are  easily  to  be  found,  no  doubt,  by 
those  who  can  tell  what  songs  the  sirens  sang.  "  He 
who  knows  where  all  this  treasure  now  is,''  says  Sir 
Thomas  Browne,  "  is  a  great  Apollo.  I  'm  sure  I  am 
not  he." 

Tenison  had  stated  that  other  discourses  by  Browne 
remained  in  manuscript,  but  added  that  he  proposed 
to  publish  them  at  due  intervals,  so  that  each  publi- 
cation might  "follow  rather  than  stifle"  the  tracts 
already  issued.  Accordingly,  it  was  not  until  1690 
that  he  produced  in  folio  a  little  work  of  great  im- 
portance, A  Letter  to  a  Friend,  a  treatise  which  some  of 
Browne's  most  judicious  admirers  have  not  hesitated 
to  place  on  the  highest  level  of  his  compositions. 
Pater  has  gone  so  far  as  to  describe  it  as  "  perhaps, 
after  all,  the  best  justification  of  Browne's  literary 
reputation,  as  it  were  his  own  curiously-figured  urn, 
and  treasure-place  of  immortal  memory."  Pater  be- 
lieved this  "  elfin  Letter,^'  as  he  calls  it,  to  have  been 
written  as  a  prelude  to  Urn-Burial,  and  therefore 
in  1658 ;  when  the  Oxford  critic  wrote,  Greenhill  had 
not  yet  developed  that  ingenious  chain  of  evidence 
which  makes  it  almost  certain  that  A  Letter  to  a  Friend 
was  composed  in  1672.  The  stylistic  fact  remains 
the  same,  however,  and  was  correctly  noted  by  Pater, 
—  the  Letter,  though  written  at  a  much  later  date, 
recurs  to  the  noble  temper  and  to  the  singular  elation 
of  spirit  which  made  Urn-Burial  and  parts  even  of 
The  Garden  of  Cyrus  unique  in  English  prose. 


170  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

Each  of  tlie  principal  works  of  Browne  has  a  strange 
uniqueness,  a  character  which  distinguishes  it  not 
merely  from  the  writings  of  others,  but  from  other 
writings  by  the  same  hand.  Baldly  stated,  the  subject 
of  A  Letter  to  a  Friend  is  a  page  from  the  note-book 
of  a  country  practitioner.  He  whose  whole  life  is 
spent  in  witnessing  the  fluctuations  of  disease,  and  its 
termination  in  death,  will,  on  one  occasion  only,  pause 
to  record,  step  by  step,  and  with  perfect  sincerity  of 
touch,  the  progress  and  character  of  that  scene  of 
mortal  decay.  His  diagnosis  takes  the  form  of  a  letter 
to  a  person  at  a  distance,  describing  to  him  the  case 
of  a  patient  who  was  known  to  them  both,  but  whom 
the  recipient  of  the  letter  had  not  lately  seen.  In  the 
solemn  arrangement  of  the  address,  the  reader  may 
suspect  that  something  is  fictitious,  but  it  is  not  so ; 
this  is  merely  the  result  of  Browne's  sententious  mode 
of  approach.  It  is  quite  obvious  that  the  "  case  "  is  a 
genuine  one ;  that  some  real  man  of  importance  in  the 
county  had  died  of  the  maladies  and  under  the  con- 
ditions which  the  physician  minutely  describes.  He 
was  not,  we  gather,  one  of  Browne's  old  familiar 
patients,  since  the  doctor  was  called  in  when  it  was 
already  too  late  to  try  to  save  the  patient's  life,  when 
all  that  medicine  could  do  was  to  prolong  the  struggle 
and  to  alleviate  the  distress.  When  he  visited  him 
first,  the  doctor  perceived  that  death  was  in  the  face, 
and  he  frankly  told  the  family  so.  The  sick  man 
would  not  see  another  summer,  he  declared,  and  in 
fact  he  lived  not  until  the  middle  of  May. 

But  during  these  last  months,  or  weeks.  Sir  Thomas 
Browne  watched  his  patient  closely,  and  he  made  a 
variety  of  acute  observations  which  were  metaphysical 


VI.]  POSTHUMOUS  WRITINGS  171 

as  well  as  physical.  Tlie  first  of  these  was  that  those 
who  love  a  dying  person  are  abandoned,  in  his  decline, 
by  all  those  intuitions  which,  in  health,  they  fancy 
will  come  to  warn  them  of  a  danger.  The  patient 
was  surrounded  by  watchers,  yet  not  one  of  them  was 
instructed  ^^by  dreams,  thoughtful  whisperings,  mer- 
curisms,  aery  nuncios  or  sympathetical  insinuations '' 
of  the  enormous  change  which  was  imminent.  The 
physical  crisis  is  attended  by  physical  signs,  and  before 
the  approach  of  disease  the  fallacies  of  the  imagination 
withdraw.  It  is  not  from  visions  of  the  night,  but 
from  the  wasted  hand,  the  pallid  face,  the  haggard  eye, 
and  from  the  experience  of  the  physician  interpreting 
these,  that  we  look  for  information.  The  dying  man 
had  suffered  in  his  childhood  from  rickets,  and  this 
had  left  a  constitutional  weakness ;  merely  to  look 
at  him,  as  he  lay  in  bed,  was  to  expect  "  a  withered 
pericardium  in  this  exuccous  corpse."  Browne  spares 
us  none  of  the  symptoms  of  the  illness  ;  he  dwells  upon 
them  deliberately  and  with  a  professional  insistency ; 
because  he  is  about  to  lift  us  into  a  height  of  spiritual 
ecstasy,  and  he  wishes  that  leap  to  be  taken  from  a 
firm  corporeal  basis,  not  from  a  groundwork  of  super- 
stition or  sentiment.  By  gradations  of  disease,  ear- 
nestly considered,  he  leads  us  to  the  article  of  death, 
which  is  thus  described :  — 

"  Though  we  could  not  have  his  life,  yet  we  missed  not  our 
desires  in  his  soft  departure,  which  was  scarce  an  exhalation ; 
and  his  end  not  unlike  his  beginning,  when  the  salient  point 
scarce  affords  a  sensible  motion ;  and  his  departure  so  like 
unto  sleep,  that  he  scarce  needed  the  civil  ceremony  of  closing 
his  eyes;  contrary  unto  the  common  way,  wherein  Death 
draws  up,  Sleep  lets  fall  the  eyelids.  With  what  strife  and 
pains  we  came  into  the  world  we  know  not,  but  'tis  commonly 


172  SIR   THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

no  easy  matter  to  get  out  of  it.  Yet,  if  it  could  be  made  out 
that  those  who  have  easy  nativities  have  commonly  hard 
deaths,  and  contrarily,  his  departure  was  so  easy,  that  we 
might  justly  suspect  his  birth  was  of  another  nature,  and  that 
some  Juno  sat  cross-legged  at  his  nativity." 

In  this,  and  in  all  that  led  np  to  it,  there  is  observ- 
able a  deep  stoic  tone,  which  little  resembles  the 
slightly  hysteric  manner  in  which  death  is  described 
by  most  of  Browne's  contemporaries.  There  is  plenty 
of  sympathy,  and  of  sorrow,  in  the  terms  of  the  Letter 
to  a  Friend,  but  there  is  no  waste  of  sentiment.  We  feel 
that  for  a  Christian  philosopher,  who  is  also  a  broad- 
minded  physicist,  to  neglect  the  idea  of  death,  would 
be  contemptible.  Yet,  as  Browne  had  himself  said  long 
before,  a  constant  familiarity  with  its  phenomena,  and 
the  conjunction  of  professional  ideas  with  them,  tends 
to  smooth  away  the  salient  parts  of  thought,  so  that 
it  is  not  to  an  elderly  doctor  that  we  should  be  apt  to 
go  for  fresh  impressions  about  the  progress  of  dissolu- 
tion down  to  death,  because  his  attention  has  been 
worn  away,  and  the  subject  has  become  commonplace 
to  him.  Well,  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  an  old  country- 
practitioner,  now  approaching  his  seventieth  year, 
will,  once  for  all,  set  down  his  impressions,  to  see 
whether  they  really  are  so  dulled  and  smooth  as  he 
fears  may  be  the  case.  He  will  see  whether  he  cannot 
still  hold  a  middle  course  between  the  foolish  terror  of 
the  inexperienced,  and  that  nonchalance  bestiale  which 
Montaigne  notes  in  those  whom  constant  practice  has 
made  indifferent  to  the  images  of  death. 

He  is  rewarded  by  a  poignant  originality,  by  a 
singular  freshness  of  aptitude.  There  is  none  of  the 
careless  and  vague  conventionality  which  he  feared  to 


VI.]  POSTHUMOUS   WRITINGS  173 

meet  with.  In  this  case  of  the  dying  friend,  which 
presents  nothing  of  supreme  scientific  curiosity,  all 
Browne's  life-long  experience  seems  concentrated,  so 
that  we  have  his  reflections  not  on  this  alone,  but  on 
all  that  life  has  taught  him  about  disease,  all  that  it 
has  made  him  hope  for  in  the  beautiful  advances 
of  "  soft  death."  In  the  extenuation  of  this  particular 
patient,  the  spiritual  part  of  his  appearance  became 
greatly  emphasised.  His  countenance  grew  more 
and  more  refined  and  distinguished  as  he  grew 
thinner  and  weaker ;  at  last,  Browne  exclaims,  "  I 
never  more  lively  beheld  the  starved  characters  of 
Dante  in  any  living  face."  He  goes  backward  to 
discuss  what  inward  changes  answered  to  this  outward 
refinement ;  but  again  he  has  to  warn  us  against  vain 
and  superstitious  fancies,  commoner  then  than  they 
are  now :  — 

"  I  could  not  but  take  notice  how  his  female  friends  were 
irrationally  curious  so  strictly  to  examine  his  dreams,  and  in 
this  low  state  to  hope  for  the  phantasms  of  health.  He  was 
now  past  the  healthful  dreams  of  the  sun,  moon,  and  stars,  in 
their  clarity  and  proper  causes.  'T  was  too  late  to  dream  of 
flying,  of  limpid  fountains,  smooth  waters,  white  vestments, 
and  fruitful  green  trees,  which  are  the  visions  of  healthful 
sleeps,  and  at  good  distance  from  the  grave." 

Having  firmly  placed  the  phenomena  with  which  he 
has  been  dealing  on  a  physical  footing,  and  having 
rejected,  with  an  uncommon  resolution,  all  the  temp- 
tations which  astrology  throws  out  "to  entitle  the 
stars  unto  any  concern  of  his  death,"  Browne  calls 
upon  us  to  slip,  as  it  were  unconsciously,  from  the  con- 
templation of  this  gracious  and  appropriate  method  of 
decease,  to  that  of  the  eternal  mystery  of  life  of  which 


174  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

it  was  the  antecliamber.  His  idea  is  that  the  spirit 
died,  that  is  to  say  became  immortal,  sooner  than  the 
body  ceased  to  breathe,  and  that  therefore  the  transi- 
tion on  the  threshold  of  eternity  was  gradual,  and  the 
transformation  to  be  piously  and  carefully  observed. 
At  this  point,  the  character  of  A  Letter  to  a  Friend 
loses  its  peculiar  value,  and  becomes  merged,  in  a 
curious  way,  for  which  the  inedited  state  of  the 
manuscript  is  certainly  responsible,  in  the  last  work  of 
Browne  which  we  are  called  upon  to  analyse,  the 
Christian  Morals. 

After  the  death  of  Browne's  only  son  in  1708,  and 
the  final  extinction  of  the  male  line  by  that  of  his 
grandson  in  1710,  his  manuscript  papers  seem  to  have 
come  into  the  possession  of  his  daughter  Elizabeth, 
who  had  married,  about  1680,  Captain  George  Lyttelton 
of  Guernsey.  The  first  step  which  she  took,  acting 
under  the  advice  of  Archbishop  Tenison,  was  to  issue 
a  collection  of  Posthumous  Works.  Among  these,  two 
are  of  particular,  though  hardly  of  absorbing,  interest. 
The  essay  on  Brampton  Urns,  written  in  1668,  is  a 
supplement  to  the  Urn-Burial  of  1658,  and  should  be 
printed  with  it.  It  describes  an  important  discovery 
of  ancient  vessels,  made  in  a  large  field  between  Buxton 
Lammas  and  Brampton,  on  the  Bure,  to  the  north  of 
Norwich.  Browne  "  thought  he  had  taken  leave  of 
urns,"  but  could  not  forbear  to  expatiate  on  these, 
at  the  digging  out  of  which  he  himself  was  present. 
The  account  of  these  antiquities  is  written  with  a 
simplicity  and  a  straightforwardness  very  unusual  in 
Browne,  who  has  adorned  it  with  none  of  his  mag- 
nificent verbiage  and  none  of  his  splendid  reflections. 
It  is  probably,  in  spite  of  a  certain  fulness,  no  more 


VI.]  POSTHUMOUS   WRITINGS  175 

than  a  set  of  notes  taken  down  to  aid  his  memory. 
We  see  him,  in  the  mind's  eye,  standing  in  the  wet 
ploughed  field  at  Brampton,  watching  the  excavation 
with  eager  eyes,  and  driven  nearly  to  frenzy  by  the 
clumsiness  of  the  labourers.  The  ground  was  soft 
with  rain,  and  when  the  men  used  their  picks,  the 
urns  were  revealed,  but,  at  first,  "  earnestly  and  care- 
lessly digging,  they  broke  all  they  met  with,  and 
finding  nothing  but  ashes  and  burnt  bones,  they 
scattered  what  they  found."  IsTor  even  when  Browne 
hung  over  them,  directing  their  labours,  were  matters 
much  better,  for  "  though  I  met  with  two  [urns]  in 
the  side  of  the  ditch,  and  used  all  care  I  could  with 
the  workmen,  yet  they  were  broken."  Here  again 
we  meet  with  that  strange  fantasy,  that  the  wine 
buried  long  ages  ago  must  retain  its  gust  and  virtue 
immensely  heightened.  Nothing  annoyed  Browne 
more  at  Brampton  than  that  the  labourers  should 
have  broken  divers  glasses  that  probably  contained 
liquors. 

The  tract  named  Repertorium  was  a  disappointment 
to  Browne's  admirers.  It  appears  to  have  been  known 
in  the  physician's  lifetime  that  he  was  preparing  an 
exhaustive  account  of  the  monuments  in  the  Cathedral 
Church  of  Norwich.  He  is  believed  to  have  put  his 
desultory  notes  together  in  the  form  of  the  Repertorium 
as  late  as  1682,  during  the  last  months  of  his  life,  for 
it  records  the  death  of  his  old  friend,  Hezekiah  Burton, 
prebendary  of  Norwich  since  1667,  who  died  in  1681. 
Those  who  imagined  that  the  Repertorium  would  be, 
what  Browne  might  easily  have  made  it,  a  grandiose 
and  melodious  reverie  among  the  tombs  of  an  ancient 
minster,  were  greatly  displeased  to  find  such  a  prosaic 


176  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

inventory  of  monuments  as  any  careful  antiquary  could 
draw  up.  Nor  is  it,  we  are  told,  so  minute  or  so  trust- 
worthy as  to  be  very  useful  for  the  prosaic  purpose 
for  which  it  was  intended.  John  Bagford,  the  biblio- 
graphical shoemaker,  frowned  upon  it  at  its  birth  by 
saying  that  it  "  rather  feared  than  deserved  publica- 
tion,'^ and  it  remains  an  instance  of  the  necessity  that 
Browne's  work  had  of  being  duly  robed,  jewelled,  and 
perfumed  before  it  was  presented  to  the  public. 

The  famous  physician  had  now,  when  the  Posthumous 
Works  were  issued  in  1712,  been  dead  for  thirty  years, 
and  there  was  still  a  legend  that  his  writings  were  not 
complete.  There  were  those  yet  living  who  remem- 
bered that  he  had  engaged  his  last  years  in  the 
preparation  of  an  ethical  work  which  he  designed 
to  complete  what  was  imperfect  in  Eeligio  Medici. 
Elizabeth  Lyttelton,  in  particular,  had  a  clear  recollec- 
tion of  reading  the  manuscript  of  such  a  work,  before 
she  left  home  in  1680,  and  when  it  was  fresh  from  her 
father's  pen.  Dr.  John  Jeffery,  archdeacon  of  Norwich, 
had  read  it  soon  after  Browne's  death ;  and  he  and  the 
family  had  the  conviction  that  it  had  been  placed, 
together  with  the  rest  of  Browne's  voluminous  manu- 
scripts, in  the  hands  of  Archbishop  Tenison.  He,  how- 
ever, could  not  recover  a  trace  of  it,  and  it  was  given 
up  for  lost  until  the  death  of  the  archbishop  in 
December  1715.  His  successor  in  the  primacy,  William 
Wake,  when  search  among  Tenison's  papers  was  being 
made  in  his  presence,  detected  what  could  only  be  the 
lost  manuscript  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne.  He  immedi- 
ately sent  it,  with  a  letter,  to  Mrs.  Lyttelton,  who 
passed  it  on  to  Archdeacon  Jeffery  to  be  edited.  John 
Jeffery  was  now  one  of  the  last  survivors  among  those 


VI.]  POSTHUMOUS  WRITINGS  177 

who  had  known  Browne  intimately.  A  Suffolk  man 
by  birth,  the  reputation  of  his  eloquence  and  piety 
had  led  to  his  being  invited  to  Norwich  in  1678,  when 
the  parishioners  of  St.  Peter  Mancroft,  of  whom  Sir 
Thoinas  Browne  was  the  most  distinguished,  elected 
him  to  that  living. 

The  treasure  trove  was  published  at  Cambridge  in 
1716,  under  the  title  of  Christian  Morals^  with  prefaces 
signed  by  Elizabeth  Lyttelton  and  by  John  Jeffery. 
The  publication  was  dedicated  by  Mrs.  Lyttelton,  in 
affectionate  terms,  to  David  Erskine,  Earl  of  Buchan, 
who  had  married  in  1697  the  daughter  of  Henry 
Fairfax  of  Hurst,  and  who  was  therefore  closely  con- 
nected with  the  family  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne.  Lord 
Buchan,  who  was  only  ten  years  old  when  the  physician 
died,  would  not  be  one  of  those  who  recollected  him  at 
Korwich.  The  book  was  divided  —  presumably  by  the 
author,  since  Jeffery  disowns  any  manipulation  —  into 
three  parts.  The  first  of  these  is  nothing  more  nor 
less  than  the  closing  pages  of  A  Letter  to  a  Friend, 
much  expanded  and  adorned.  The  second  is  concerned 
with  the  criticism  of  opinion ;  the  third  collects  a  series 
of  principles  for  the  conduct  of  life.  The  Christian 
Morals  is  a  work  innocent  of  all  evolution ;  it  begins 
anywhere  and  closes  nowhere.  It  is  a  string  of 
pleasant  gnomic  expansions,  and  excellent  hortatory 
remarks.  Common  sense  is  set  out  in  it  with  all  the 
trappings  of  an  extremely  elaborate  style.  The  author 
speaks  like  a  sibylline  oracle,  addressing  us  from  a 
great  height  of  experience.  The  hard  light  of  his 
precepts,  and  it  is  very  dry,  is  softened  by  an 
extreme,  sometimes  an  excessive,  elegance  of  expres- 
sion.     The  book  is   an   address,  in  the  manner   of 

N 


178  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

Solomon,  to  anybody,  and  that  autobiographical  air 
of  confidence,  which  was  so  fascinating  in  Religio 
Medici,  is  here  wholly  relinquished  in  favour  of  doctrine 
and  admonishment.  The  writer  whom  we  have  loved 
to  find  walking  by  our  side,  and  "murmuring  like  a 
noon-tide  bee,"  has  ascended  the  pulpit  in  a  cassock, 
and  thunders  his  Christian  Morals  at  us  from  a  height 
above  our  heads. 

No  one  has  loved  Browne  better  than  Greenhill 
did,  and  since  he  says  that  this  book  "  by  its  title 
raises  expectations  which'  are  hardly  realised,"  and 
that  it  "contains  nothing  equal  in  piety  or  eloquence" 
to  the  author's  best  things  elsewhere,  we  are  absolved 
from  any  extravagance  of  admiration  for  Christian 
Morals.  It  belongs  to  a  class  of  hortatory  treatises 
which  were  popular  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and 
are  out  of  fashion  now,  while  in  that  very  class  it 
had  predecessors  of  a  greater  consistency  and  a  livelier 
eloquence.  Tor  instance,  one  would  put  it  down  at 
any  moment  to  take  up  George  Montagu's  Manchester 
al  MondOf  with  which  it  courts,  but  cannot  sustain, 
comparison.  This  kind  of  book,  occupied  with  the 
sententious  expansion  of  accepted  moral  maxims,  is 
scarcely  compatible  with  high  intellectual  culture.  It 
is  in  its  essence  primitive,  and  pleases  now,  if  it  please 
at  all,  by  its  quaintness  and  naivete.  It  belonged  to 
a  social  order  which  had  thought  for  a  century  that 
all  wisdom,  human  and  divine,  was  shut  up  within 
the  Quatrains  of  the  Lord  of  Pibrac,  which  were  house- 
hold words  in  every  European  language.  There  is 
good  reason  to  suppose  that  in  Browne's  case  the 
treatise  consists  of  paragraphs  extended  from  thoughts 
set  down  at  intervals  in  a  common-place  book. 


VI.]  POSTHUMOUS   WRITINGS 


179 


It  is  evident  that  Christian  Morals  is  a  work  of  the 
close  of  its  author's  life.     What  is  said,  and  frequently 
repeated,  about  the  latitude  of  years  and  the  deep  gust 
of  the  world,  points  to  an  age  of  seventy  years  and 
over.     It  is  not  likely  that,  in  its  present  form,  it  was 
begun  before  1675,  nor  finished  earlier  than  1680.     It 
has  something  of  the  triteness  of  old  age,  and,  at  the 
same  time,  much  of  its  serenity  and  dignity.     It  is  a 
call  from  a  venerable  man  to ''  behold  thyself  by  inward 
optics,  and  the  crystalline  of  thy  soul."     It  breathes 
a  full  sense  of  the  restfulness  and  sweetness  of  memory 
directed  backwards  over  a  long  and  well-spent   life. 
It  is  packed  with  precepts  which  appeal  to  the  highest 
sentiments  of  a  man,  and  are  appropriate  in  the  mouth 
of  one  who  has  made  them  the  guiding  light  of  his 
own  life.     Among  such  gnomes  none  is  better  worth 
cherishing  than    the   following,  with  which  Part  i. 
closes :  — 

"  Bright  thoughts,  clear  deeds,  constancy,  fidelity,  bounty, 
and  generous  honesty  are  the  gems  of  noble  minds  ;  wherein 
—  to  derogate  from  none— the  true  heroic  English  gentleman 
hath  no  peer." 

Perhaps  the  most  valuable  pages  of  Christian  Morals 
are  those  which  inculcate  and  define  a  wholesome  crit- 
ical attitude  towards  life  and  literature.  Browne  bids 
us  avoid  dogmatism,  and  be  guided  by  well-weighed 
considerations.  Here  is  the  gnomic  wisdom  of  the 
old  physician  at  its  ripest:  — 

^  "  Let  thy  studies  be  free  as  thy  thoughts  and  contempla- 
tions, but  fly  not  only  upon  the  wings  of  imagination.  Join 
sense  unto  reason  and  experiment  unto  speculation,  and  so 
give  fife  unto  embryon  truths,  and  verities  yet  in  their  chaos. 
There  is  nothing  more  acceptable  unto  the  ingenious  world 


>    _ 


180  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

than  this  noble  eluctation  of  truth,  wherein,  against  the 
tenacity  of  prejudice  and  prescription,  this  century  now  pre- 
vaileth.  What  libraries  of  new  volumes  aftertimes  will 
behold,  and  in  what  a  new  world  of  knowledge  the  eyes  of 
our  posterity  may  be  happy,  a  few  ages  may  joyfully  declare, 
and  is  but  a  cold  thought  unto  those  who  cannot  hope  to 
behold  this  exantlation  of  truth,  or  that  obscured  virgin  half 
out  of  the  pit." 

The  love  of  using  extraordinary  words  to  heighten 
the  effect  of  ordinary  thoughts  was  no  less  powerful 
in  him  at  the  close  of  his  life  than  it  had  been  at  its 
beginning.  It  is  impossible  not  to  ask  ourselves  how 
many  of  his  readers  Browne  expected  to  know  that 
"  exantlation "  is  the  same  as  "  pumping  up  out  of  a 
well,"  and  that  '^eluctation"  means  "pushing  forth." 
Did  he  in  the  pride  of  his  own  learning  forget  the 
existence  of  the  comparative  ignorance  around  him,  or 
did  he  consciously  yield  to  the  pleasure  of  dazzling 
the  unlearned?  With  one  more  extract  we  must 
leave  Christian  Morals  to  produce  its  own  fragmentary 
impression :  — 

"  Look  not  for  whales  in  the  Euxine  Sea,  or  expect  great 
matters  where  they  are  not  to  be  found.  Seek  not  for  pro- 
fundity in  shallowness,  or  fertility  in  a  wilderness.  Place  not 
the  expectation  of  great  happiness  here  below  or  think  to  find 
heaven  on  earth,  wherein  we  must  be  content  with  embryon 
felicities  and  fruitions  of  doubtful  forces.  For  the  circle  of 
our  felicities  makes  but  short  arches.  In  every  clime  we  are 
in  a  periscian  state  [that  is  :  with  shadows  all  about  us] ,  and 
with  our  light  our  shadow  and  darkness  walk  about  us.  Our 
contentments  stand  upon  the  tops  of  pyramids  ready  to  fall 
off,  and  the  insecurity  of  their  enjoyments  abrupteth  our 
tranquillities.  What  we  magnify  is  magnificent,  but  like  to 
the  Colossus,  noble  without,  stuffed  with  rubbish  and  coarse 
metal  within.  Even  the  sun,  whose  glorious  outside  we 
behold,  may  have  dark  and  smoky  entrails." 


VI.]  CHARACTERISTICS  181 

In  all  these  long-drawn  reflections  we  find  little  or 
nothing  asserted  about  faith  or  dogma.  There  is  less, 
in  fact,  of  definite  assurance  in  Christian  Morals  than 
there  had  been  in  Religio  Medici.  But  to  any  one  who 
made  this  objection,  Browne  would  doubtless  have 
replied,  as  Dr.  Johnson  did  to  the  Due  de  Chaulnes 
on  a  similar  occasion,  that  all  such  exhortation  was 
taken  for  granted,  as  it  is  the  Christian  religion  alone 
which  puts  morality  upon  its  proper  basis. 

Two  years  after  the  death  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  it 
was  announced  that  a  project  was  on  foot  for  writing 
his  life.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  memorials 
collected  by  John  Whitefoot  were  jotted  down  at  this 
time  for  the  purpose  of  aiding  the  biographer.  We 
may  bear  with  philosophy  the  disappointment  of  not 
possessing  this  life,  which  was  evidently  never  written, 
since  it  was  to  have  been  produced  at  that  very  darkest 
hour  of  English  biography,  when  Sprat's  Life  of  Cowley 
was  the  model  in  fashion,  and  since  unquestionably 
Thomas  Tenison  was  to  have  been  the  writer.  That 
archbishop  was  an  excellent  religious  creature,  but 
when  he  took  a  pen  in  hand  he  grew,  as  Swift  said 
of  him,  "hot  and  heavy,  like  a  tailor's  goose."  In  all 
probability,  Tenison,  as  his  duties  crowded  upon  him, 
gradually  abandoned  the  design  of  writing  the  Life  of 
Browne,  yet  clung  to  it  long  enough  to  prevent  its 
preparation  by  any  other  writer.  Soon  after  1682, 
however,  the  Rev.  John  Whitefoot,  rector  of  Heigham, 
in  Norfolk,  who  had  been  more  closely  acquainted  with 
Browne,  ever  since  he  came  to  Norwich  in  1637,  than 
any  other  surviving  friend,  put  down  those  recollec- 
tions, of  which  mention  has  just  been  made.  We  can 
only  wish  t?iat  his  modesty  had  permitted  him  to 
carry  them  into  further  detail. 


182  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

From  this  source,  however,  and  from  his  portraits, 
we  gain  a  distinct  idea  of  the  personal  appearance  of 
Sir  Thomas  Browne.  He  was  of  moderate  height,  and 
neither  fat  nor  lean ;  he  was  cvo-apKos,  of  a  well-pro- 
portioned figure.  He  appears,  from  his  pictures,  to 
have  had  an  abundance  of  warm-coloured  hair,  natu- 
rally rolling ;  when  his  tomb  was  opened,  it  was  seen 
to  be  still  of  an  auburn  tint,  in  spite  of  his  seventy- 
seven  years.  He  wore  a  moustache  and  small  chin- 
beard,  and  his  complexion  was  "answerable  to  his 
name,"  being  doubtless  tanned  by  much  exposure. 
His  remarkably  large  and  luminous  eyes,  dark,  under 
curved  eyebrows,  gave  a  look  of  distinction  and 
curiosity  to  his  face ;  the  smiling  mouth,  full  nose 
and  smooth  forehead  presented  a  healthful  comeliness, 
a  sense  of  richness  in  vitality,  which  responded  to  the 
man^s  amiable  and  wholesome  disposition.  He  was 
simple  in  his  dress,  although  so  very  fond  of  orna- 
ment in  his  style,  and  he  "  affected  plainness."  It  was 
thought  singular  that  he  always  wore  a  cloak  and 
boots,  which  had  been  the  dress  of  his  youth,  even 
after  that  style  went  out  at  the  Restoration.  He  was 
subject  to  cold,  and  took  pains  to  be  always  warmly 
clad ;  we  have  seen  his  solicitude  that  his  sons  should 
wear  flannel  next  their  skin. 

In  his  domestic  relations,  Browne  seems  to  have 
approached  perfection.  He  was  a  constant  and  assid- 
uous husband,  and  a  most  tender  father,  without 
lapsing  into  any  foolish  fondness  in  his  discipline 
of  his  children.  His  letters  to  the  various  mem- 
bers of  his  family,  and  in  particular  to  his  sons,  are 
full  of  considerate  affection.  More  than  this,  they 
display  the  rare  parental  wisdom  which  recognises  the 


VI.]  CHARACTERISTICS  183 

moment  when  the  child  has  become  adult,  and  must 
be  approached  with  sympathy  and  tact,  as  being  a 
friend  and  no  longer  a  dependant.  Whitefoot,  who 
was  not  a  practised  writer,  seems  to  say  that  Browne's 
chief  temptations  were  love  and  anger,  and  that  the 
passions  which  did  most  easily  beset  him  were  "  the 
irascible  and  concupiscible.''  As,  however,  he  also  tells 
us  that  both  of  these  were  under  the  control  of  his 
reason,  it  is  possible  that  Browne,  as  he  occasionally 
does  even  in  Religio  Medici,  had  confided  to  his  friend 
what  a  rogue  he  would  be  in  grain,  were  it  not  for 
the  vigour  of  his  Christian  philosophy.  As  a  fact,  he 
seems  to  have  been,  outwardly,  the  most  serene  and 
the  most  amenable  of  citizens.  "  He  had  no  despotical 
power  over  his  affections  and  passions,  but  as  large  a 
political  power  over  them  as  any  stoic  or  man  of  his 
time.''  We  gain  the  impression  that  Browne  some- 
times boasted  of  his  reserve,  just  as  Wordsworth  said 
that  he  could  have  inflamed  the  passions  no  less  tumul- 
tuously  than  Lord  Byron,  if  he  had  had  a  mind  to 
do  so. 

Browne's  serenity  was  marked  in  his  daily  comport- 
ment. "  He  was  never  seen  to  be  transported  with 
mirth  or  dejected  with  sadness.  Always  cheerful,  but 
rarely  merry."  He  had  no  sense  of  humour,  and  here 
it  is  worth  while  to  observe  that  those  who  are  so  fond 
of  attributing  this  quality  to  Sir  Thomas  Browne  are 
deceived  by  what  has  now  come  to  be  the  quaintness 
or  oddity  of  his  language.  It  is  doubtful  whether  in 
the  whole  body  of  his  writings  there  is  a  single  phrase 
written  for  the  purpose  or  in  the  expectation  of  raising 
a  laugh.  He  is  occasionally  willing  to  provoke  a  smile 
by  his  wit,  but   that  is  a  very  different  thing  from 


184  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

humour.  As  a  man,  and  as  a  writer,  he  was  senten- 
tious. Whitefoot  tells  us  that  in  conversation  he 
would  rarely  break  into  a  jest,  and  that  if  he  did  do 
so,  by  accident,  he  was  wont  to  blush  at  the  levity 
of  what  he  had  perpetrated.  This,  again,  was  like 
Wordsworth,  who  had  a  theory  that  it  was  not  becom- 
ing to  allow  himself  to  be  funny. 

A  curious  idiosyncrasy  was  an  effect  of  his  thin 
dark  skin,  for  blush  after  blush  would  mantle  over 
his  face  on  slight  occasion,  and  often  without  any 
observable  cause  at  all.  Whitefoot  attributed  this  to 
Browne's  modesty,  but  perhaps  it  was  merely  physi- 
cal ;  Darwin  notes  that  this  phenomenon  is  very  fre- 
quent in  mulattoes.  Browne  seems  to  have  discoursed 
with  great  freedom  and  fulness  when  he  was  stirred 
with  excitement;  but  on  ordinary  occasions  he  was 
"  so  free  from  loquacity,  or  much  talkativeness,  that 
he  was  something  difficult  to  be  engaged  in  any 
discourse ;  though,  when  he  was  so,  it  was  always 
singular,  and  never  trite  nor  vulgar.  Parsimonious  in 
nothing  but  his  time,  whereof  he  made  as  much  im- 
provement, with  as  little  loss,  as  any  man  in  it,  when 
he  had  any  to  spare  from  his  drudging  practice,  he 
was  scarce  patient  of  any  diversion  from  his  study, 
so  impatient  of  sloth  and  idleness,  that  he  would  say 
he  '  could  not  do  nothing.'  " 

Like  many  of  those  who  combine  high  gifts  of 
imagination  with  a  serene  and  dispassionate  tempera- 
ment, Browne  cultivated  friendship  with  great  care. 
His  attitude  to  this  virtue  was  very  similar  to  that 
of  Montaigne.  He  saw  nothing  in  the  Greek  stories 
of  the  devotion  of  Damon  to  Pythias  or  of  Achilles  to 
Patroclus  which  he  could  not  have  performed  himself. 


VI.]  CHAKACTERISTICS  185 

He  discovered  no  extravagance  in  the  idea  that  a  man 
should  lay  down  his  life  for  another  man,  if  he  loved 
him.  His  expressions  on  this  subject  of  friendship 
are  among  the  most  eloquent  which  his  writings 
contain,  and  among  the  most  characteristic.  He 
says :  — 

"  With  my  friend  I  desire  not  to  share  or  to  participate, 
but  to  engross,  his  sorrows,  that,  by  making  them  mine  own,  I 
may  more  easily  discuss  them.  In  my  own  reason,  and  within 
myself,  I  can  command  that  which  I  cannot  intreat  without 
myself,  and  within  the  circle  of  another.  I  have  often  thought 
those  noble  pains  and  examples  of  friendship  not  so  truly 
histories  of  what  had  been,  as  fictions  of  what  should  be ;  but 
I  now  perceive  nothing  in  them  but  possibilities.  ...  I  confess 
I  do  not  observe  that  order  that  the  Schools  ordain  our  affec- 
tions, to  love  our  parents,  wives,  children,  and  then  our  friends. 
For,  excepting  the  injunctions  of  religion,  I  do  not  find  in 
myself  such  a  necessary  and  indissoluble  sympathy  to  all  those 
of  my  blood.  I  hope  I  do  not  break  the  Fifth  Commandment, 
if  I  conceive  I  may  love  my  friend  before  the  nearest  of  my 
blood,  even  those  to  whom  I  owe  the  principles  of  life.  I 
never  yet  cast  a  true  affection  on  a  woman ;  but  I  have  loved 
my  friend  as  I  do  virtue,  my  soul,  my  God." 

This  was  written  in  1635,  and  before  his  marriage 
to  Dorothy  Mileham.  But  the  sentiment  of  friend- 
ship, moderated  by  age  and  exercised  with  reasonable 
reserve,  continued  dominant  with  him  to  the  last. 

Browne's  linguistic  acquirements  were  remarkable. 
In  1635  he  was  able  to  say,  "  besides  the  jargon  and 
patois  of  several  provinces,  I  understand  no  less  than 
six  languages. ''  He  must  be  speaking  here  of  modern 
languages ;  French,  Italian,  Spanish,  German,  Dutch, 
and  Danish  are  probably  those  he  refers  to.  He  would 
not  include  Latin  and  Greek  in  such  a  list,  nor  Hebrew, 
of  which  "  he  was  not  content  to  be  wholly  ignorant," 


186  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

nor  Arabic,  whicli  lie  read,  althougli  lie  erroneously 
supposed  it  to  be  "a  derivative  idiom"  of  Hebrew. 
His  correspondence  with  tbe  Icelanders  was  sustained 
in  Latin,  but  he  was  perhaps  not  entirely  ignorant  of 
the  ancient  language  of  the  island.  We  are  told  that 
he  continued  to  add  to  his  knowledge,  and  that  he 
came  to  understand  "  most  of  the  European  languages, 
namely,  all  that  are  in  Hutten's  Bible,  which  he  made 
use  of."  To  pick  out  the  meaning  of  a  page  in  a 
polyglot  Bible  is  no  great  stretch  of  scholarship,  though 
it  seems  to  have  dazzled  Whitefoot.  It  is  difficult  to 
judge  how  deep  Browne's  knowledge  of  languages  may 
have  been,  but  it  was  certainly  wide.  His  letters  to 
his  sons  Edward  and  Thomas  contain  some  very  sen- 
sible advice  as  to  the  best  way  of  gaining  colloquial 
freedom  in  a  foreign  tongue. 

He  was  a  constant  student  of  astronomy,  although 
tainted  to  the  last  by  that  provoking  desire  to  obtain 
from  the  stars  replies  to  private  conundrums,  which 
was  a  vice  of  the  intelligence  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  "  I  know  the  names,  and  something  more," 
he  says,  "  of  all  the  constellations  in  my  horizon  " ;  and 
no  English  writer  has  given  a  nobler  impression  of 
the  plenitude  and  mystery  of  the  nocturnal  sky.  How 
deep  a  study  he  made  of  zoology  and  of  botany,  his 
books  and  papers  are  before  us  to  prove.  Whether 
he  had  any  practice  in  the  art  of  music  we  do  not 
know,  but  he  used  to  sit  in  Norwich  cathedral  listen- 
ing, in  an  ecstasy,  to  its  organ,  the  tone  of  which 
was  particularly  sweet.  He  regretted  that  he  did 
not  possess  one  of  those  miraculous  memories  with 
which  Scaliger  was  credited,  which  retained  every 
fact  and  date  that  was  stored  up  in  it,  but  his  own 


VI.]  CHARACTERISTICS  187 

was  "  capacious  and  tenacious."  He  never  forgot  the 
contents  of  a  book  that  he  had  read;  was  quick  to 
recollect  all  persons  he  had  ever  seen,  though  after  a 
long  course  of  years ;  and  instantly  connected  with 
people's  names  their  physical  peculiarities  and  their 
accustomed  modes  of  address.  These  were  character- 
istics which  help  to  explain  Sir  Thomas  Browne's 
immense  popularity  as  a  doctor. 

He  was  excellent  company  when  he  was  not  dis- 
tracted by  his  professional  responsibilities.  Those  who 
knew  him  only  by  his  books  were  sometimes  disap- 
pointed to  find  the  man  so  quiet  and  sedate ;  nor  did 
he  ever  wake  up  in  society  to  a  high  note  of  eloquence. 
He  cultivated  a  stoical  genius,  which  he  loved  to  illus- 
trate by  "  excellent  strains  "  in  the  poetry  of  Lucan. 
He  was  plain  almost  to  affectation ;  and  Whitefoot  has 
an  excellent  phrase  to  describe  his  manner  when  he 
says  that  it  "  expressed  more  light  than  heat  in  the 
temper  of  his  brain."  He  was,  above  all,  and  at  all 
times,  a  dreamer  of  dreams;  and  to  complete  our 
picture  of  him  we  can  do  no  better  than  to  quote  the 
visionary's  own  charming  confession :  — 

"At  my  nativity  my  ascendant  was  the  watery  sign  of 
Scorpius.  I  was  born  in  the  planetary  hour  of  Saturn,  and  I 
think  I  have  a  piece  of  that  leaden  planet  in  me.  I  am  no 
way  facetious,  nor  disposed  for  the  mirth  and  galliardize  of 
company ;  yet  in  one  dream  I  can  compose  a  whole  comedy, 
behold  the  action,  apprehend  the  jests,  and  laugh  myself 
awake  at  the  conceits  thereof.  Were  my  memory  as  faithful 
as  my  reason  is  then  fruitful,  I  would  never  study  but  in  my 
dreams ;  and  this  time  also  would  I  choose  for  my  devotions. 
But  our  grosser  memories  have  then  so  little  hold  of  our 
abstracted  understandings,  that  they  forget  the  story,  and  can 
only  relate  to  our  awaked  souls  a  confused  and  broken  tale 
of  that  that  hath  passed." 


CHAPTER  VII 

LANGUAGE  AND  INFLUENCE 

A  CURIOUS  element  in  Browne's  intellectual  situation 
was  its  isolated  character.  Others  had  London  to  look 
to,  or  at  least  Oxford  or  Cambridge;  he  had  only- 
Norwich,  and  although  that  city  possessed  a  large 
population  and  much  comparative  dignity,  there  was 
no  rivalry  for  him  there  and  little  encouragement. 
For  these  he  was  forced  to  turn  to  disciples  and  corre- 
spondents ;  and  we  form  the  impression  that,  as  time 
went  by,  he  got  less  and  less  stimulus  from  the  one 
and  from  the  other.  In  the  later  years,  Browne's 
main  intellectual  solace  came  from  the  piety,  the  zeal, 
the  untiring  kindliness,  of  his  admirable  son  Edward, 
who  shared  from  London  with  his  father  in  Norwich 
all  that  was  curious  and  interesting  in  the  movement 
of  science.  But  Edward  Browne,  a  true  child  of  the 
new  age,  was  entirely  devoted  to  the  advancement  of 
exact  knowledge.  He  wanted  to  add  to  the  store  of 
facts,  to  discover  the  precise  proportions  of  truth ;  to 
lay  down  the  principles  of  the  New  Philosophy,  as  his 
friends  had  called  it  when  they  met  so  soberly,  so 
stringently,  at  those  lodgings  of  Dr.  Goddard's,  over 
the  optician's  shop  in  Wood  Street,  out  of  which  the 
Koyal  Society  had  sprung.  Edward  Browne  excluded 
the  imagination  altogether  from  his  speculations ;  the 

188 


CHAP.  VII.]      LANGUAGE  AND  INFLUENCE  189 

light  lie  worked  in  was  a  dry,  white  light.  But  the 
light  in  which  Thomas  Browne  worked  was  shot  with 
all  the  colours  of  the  spectrum,  it  was  flashed  out 
against  a  firmament  of  romantic  gloom.  Edward's 
ambition  was  to  get  at  the  fact,  to  fasten  it  down  with 
the  fewest  words  possible,  with  a  disregard  for  any 
quality  of  style  except  a  lucid  brevity.  In  a  genera- 
tion so  given  over  to  parsimony  of  effect,  what  comfort 
was  there  left  for  the  embroidering  visionary  who  had 
written  the  Urn-Burial  ? 

But  his  very  provincialism  and  absence  of  rivalry 
brought  Browne  consolations.  He  was  a  very  great 
man  at  Norwich,  whatever  might  be  thought  of  him 
in  London.  He  seems  to  have  been  little  troubled  by 
that  oppression  of  spirits  which  the  vastness  of  possible 
attainment  breeds  in  men  of  really  encyclopedic 
ambition.  He  became,  in  the  absence  of  criticism  at 
his  side,  satisfied  with  short  draughts  of  that  Pierian 
spring  of  which  Pope,  another  hasty  drinker,  speaks 
so  sententiously.  The  age  of  book-learning  for  its 
own  sake  was  just  over;  the  sixteenth  century  had 
carried  the  pursuit  of  that  kind  of  learning  to  the  last 
extremity,  in  an  age  when  Salmasius  had  suffered  the 
torments  of  Tantalus  because  he  was  not  able  to  read 
all  books  at  once.  The  new  age  was  disregarding 
books,  and  was  going  straight  to  nature,  determined  to 
make  new,  stiff,  half-mathematical  treatises  that  should 
be  mere  records  of  experiment,  repertories  of  hard  fact. 
Sir  Thomas  Browne,  as  a  scholar,  comes  between  the 
two  epochs.  He  had  not  Donne's  "  hydroptic  immoder- 
ate desire  of  human  learning,"  nor  was  he  capable,  like 
Bay,  of  putting  all  the  beauty  of  erudition  aside  and 
reducing  literature  to  a  methodical  synopsis  of  species. 


190  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

He  was  tlie  greatest  and  tlie  most  intelligent  of 
a  little  group  who  handled  facts,  but  delighted  to 
take  refuge  from  them  in  speculation.  Science  to 
him,  as  we  see  in  his  letters  to  Edward  Browne,  was 
still  "  literature,"  just  as  it  was  to  others  in  whom  we 
now  detect  a  certain  taint  of  quackery,  as  it  was  pre- 
eminently to  that  curious  person,  John  Bulwer,  the 
"  chirosopher,"  and  author  in  1650  of  Anthropometamor- 
phosis.  The  Eoyal  Society  could  not  recognise  the 
erudition  of  such  persons,  however  talented  they  might 
be,  and  however  eloquent,  for  it  had  been  definitely 
created  for  the  purpose  of  sweeping  them  away. 

"We  have,  therefore,  in  considering  the  position  of 
Sir  Thomas  Browne,  to  face  the  fact  that  his  subject- 
matter  is  not  of  supreme  importance,  that  it  would, 
even,  not  be  important  enough  to  preserve  him  —  if 
that  were  all  he  had  to  give  —  among  the  foremost 
literary  oddities  of  his  time.  If  we  think  of  him 
merely  as  a  physician  or  surgeon,  he  has  no  claim  to 
be  remembered  by  the  side  of  such  men  as  Sydenham 
or  Wallis  or  Eichard  Lower.  No  one  can  seriously 
believe  that  the  Vulgar  Errors  gives  him  a  right  to  be 
ranked  among  biologists.  We  do  not  go  to  the  Urn- 
Burial  for  information  about  antique  ceramic,  nor  to 
TJie  Garden  of  Cyrus  for  rules  of  horticulture,  nor  to 
Christian  Morals  for  an  ethical  system.  Wherever  we 
lean  on  the  substance  of  Browne's  treatises,  it  cracks 
and  gives  way,  it  is  worm-eaten  and  hollow.  If  we  go 
to  his  books  as  to  compendiums  of  valuable  informa- 
tion, we  find  them  as  empty  as  so  many  leaking  vessels. 

Browne,  therefore,  is  a  pre-eminent  example  of  the 
class  of  writer  with  whom  it  is  form,  not  substance, 
that  is  of  the  first  importance.      He  is  interesting 


VII.]  LANGUAGE   AND   INFLUENCE  191 

almost  exclusively  to  tlie  student  and  lover  of  style. 
That  is  to  say,  to  the  student  of  style  in  its  wider 
acceptation,  not  in  the  mere  melodious  arrangement 
of  beautiful  words,  but  in  the  manipulation  of  language 
with  such  art  as  to  reveal  a  personal  temperament  and 
to  illustrate  a  human  point  of  view.  Among  English 
prose-writers  of  the  highest  merit  there  are  few  who 
have  more  consciously,  more  successfully,  aimed  at  the 
translation  of  temperament  by  style  than  the  physician 
of  Norwich  did.  His  case  is  very  curious,  because  we 
find  in  him  little  sympathy  with  the  current  literature 
of  his  country,  or  of  the  modern  vernaculars  at  all. 
In  his  superb  neglect  of  all  contemporary  poetry  and 
prose,  in  his  scorn  of  the  poets  in  particular,  he  ex- 
ceeds Jeremy  Taylor,  whose  contempt  of  modern 
writing  went  far.  The  great  English  authors  from 
Chaucer  down  to  Milton,  from  Wycliffe  down  to 
Dryden,  might  never  have  existed  for  all  the  attention 
they  receive  from  Sir  Thomas  Browne.  Almost  the 
only  reference  to  a  living  imaginative  author  which  is 
to  be  found  in  the  length  and  breadth  of  his  works  is 
a  note  written  at  the  time  that  Hudibras  was  published. 
That  piece  reminds  him  of  "  divers  examples "  of 
burlesque  in  Athenaeus ;  "  the  first  inventor  hereof  was 
Hipponactes,  but  Hegemon,  Sopater  and  many  more 
pursued  the  same  vein."  The  whole  note  is  a  mere 
pellet  of  sun-dried  pedantry,  without  a  single  word 
to  show  that  the  author  had  comprehended  or  read  or 
perhaps  even  seen  Butler's  poem. 

Where,  then,  did  he  find  courage  to  write  in  the 
service  of  beauty  ?  Recognising  no  dignity  in  the 
English  language,  no  importance  or  vitality  in  English 
literature,  how  was  it  that  he  took  the  trouble   to 


192  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

clothe  himself  in  the  splendours  of  the  one  and  con- 
sciously to  adorn  the  other?  These  are  questions 
which  it  is  impossible  to  answer.  All  we  can  affirm  is 
that  such  was  the  odd,  the  paradoxical  case ;  that  Sir 
Thomas  Browne,  profoundly  indifferent  to  English  prose 
other  than  his  own,  devoted  himself  to  English  prose  as 
if  it  had  been  the  art  of  his  predilection.  Unquestion- 
ably, he  tasted  the  divine  pleasure  of  writing  for  its 
own  sake;  that  breathes  out  of  all  his  best  pages. 
Moreover,  in  spite  of  his  unaccountable  attitude  to  con- 
temporary literature  and  his  scorn  of  its  attempts,  in 
his  own  person  he  was  confident  of  conquering  eternity 
with  the  delicious  artifice  of  style. 

We  do  not  begin  to  understand  Browne,  or  do 
justice  to  him,  until  we  comprehend  that  we  are  deal- 
ing with  a  conscious  and  sensitive  artist.  We  are  told 
that  Browne  was  simple  in  his  manners  and  attire. 
Let  us  not  believe  that  his  writing  is  plain  or  easy. 
The  examination  of  his  numerous  manuscripts  is 
enough  to  show  with  what  care  he  ran  over  the  texture 
of  his  sentences,  weighing  them  down  with  precious 
metal,  fusing,  elaborating,  and  implicating  them,  turn- 
ing the  rough  yarn  of  statement  into  heavy  cloth  of 
gold.  De  Quincey  said  that  we  abuse  the  attribution 
^'  simple  " ;  not  everything  fine  is  simple,  he  says,  — 
Belshazzar's  feast  was  not.  The  style  of  Sir  Thomas 
Browne  is  another  splendid  thing  which,  however,  is  not 
simple.  Browne  is  distinctly  a  difficult  writer.  It  is 
not  that  his  thought  is  exceedingly  profound,  but  it  is 
often  startlingly  unexpected,  and  dazzles  us  by  its 
flash,  while  it  is  almost  always  clothed  in  language  of 
a  wanton  ingenuity.  Browne  introduces  themes,  illus- 
trations, digressions,  for  their  own  sakes,  and  because 


VII.]  LANGUAGE  AND   INFLUENCE  193 

they  give  him  his  opportunity  to  fly  off,  obliquely, 
with  a  flash  of  his  unaccountable  intelligence,  to  some 
distant  corner  of  the  subject.  He  has  not  the  smallest 
reluctance  in  pillaging  antiquity,  particularly  the 
ornate  Latin  of  the  Eenaissance,  to  adorn  his  work, 
and  he  likes  to  hear  great  classic  names,  sonorous  and 
obscure,  reverberating  down  the  hollow  places  of  his 
prose.  And,  if  we  think  of  him  as  an  architect  of 
phrases,  the  skill  with  which  he  is  able  to  build  up 
cloud-castles  of  mere  verbal  development  is  positively 
a  snare  to  him  ;  he  cannot  stop ;  he  will  pile  story 
upon  story,  and  a  turret  on  the  last,  and  a  pinnacle 
upon  the  turret.  The  fabric  always  stands  there,  high 
in  air,  since  it  is  raised  with  cunning  out  of  strong 
materials,  but  it  is  sometimes  too  fantastic  to  be 
habitable. 

Browne  was  greatly  interested  in  the  beauty  of 
words,  in  their  sound,  their  form,  the  image  that  they 
raised.  But  his  treatment  of  them  was  very  curious, 
and  is  not  easily  or  completely  to  be  justified.  There 
was  something  abnormal  in  Browne's  intellect,  and  it 
is  shown  in  the  rather  mad  way  in  which  he  tossed 
words  about.  He  was  "exuberant  in  conceit,"  and 
this  richness  affected  his  vocabulary  ;  it  made  him 
sometimes  freakish  and  capricious.  Dr.  Johnson,  who 
was  far  more  thoroughly  restrained  by  tradition,  had 
his  own  tendencies  to  extravagance  of  diction,  and 
excused  them  by  saying,  "  He  that  thinks  with  more 
extent  than  another  will  want  words  of  larger  mean- 
ing; he  that  thinks  with  more  subtlety  will  seek  for 
terms  of  more  nice  discrimination."  Browne,  with  his 
instinct  for  reducing  everything  in  heaven  or  earth  to 
the   substance   of   the   subject  in  hand,   perpetually 


194  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

"  wants  "  words,  and  "  seeks  "  them  ardently.  He 
wants  tliem  to  be  above  all  things  picturesque ;  lie 
seeks  them  far  afield  and  in  the  most  unlikely  places. 
He  was  very  punctilious,  as  we  have  seen,  and  highly 
artificial.  He  was  conscious  of  no  controlling  taste 
around  him,  holding  him  in,  subduing  the  most  daring 
elements  in  his  vocabulary.  In  consequence,  he  built 
up  the  music  of  his  sonorous  balanced  periods  as  he 
pleased,  without  any  criticism  to  restrain  him,  and  the 
consequence  is  the  irregular  splendour  that  we  see  in 
the  Urn-Burial  and  A  Letter  to  a  Friend. 

These  were  the  considerations,  no  doubt,  which  led 
Coleridge,  one  of  Browne's  greatest  admirers,  to  say 
that  Browne,  "though  a  writer  of  great  genius,  first 
effectually  injured  the  literary  taste  of  the  nation  by 
his  introduction  of  learned  words,  merely  because  they 
were  learned."  The  only  exception  we  can  make  to 
this  lies  in  the  use  of  "  first " ;  Coleridge,  of  course, 
remembered  that  the  whole  tendency  of  the  age  in 
which  Browne  lived  was  towards  violent  experiment  in 
the  aesthetic  value  of  words.  We  see  it  in  Burton,  in 
Wilkins,  in  Milton,  but  Coleridge  is  perfectly  right 
in  emphasising  that  we  see  it  most  and  best  in  Browne. 
The  time  was  one  of  great  linguistic  animation,  and 
the  whole  world  of  English  words  was  in  a  turmoil. 
The  language  was  passing  through  a  violent  crisis, 
none  the  less  violent  because  no  one  seems  to  have 
perceived  the  fact.  Anxious  to  add  a  dignity  to 
English,  Browne  for  his  part  was  all  in  favour  of  pro- 
ducing that  dignity  by  a  lofty  diction  founded  on 
Latin  and  Greek  forms.  He  thought  that  we  had 
neglected  our  opportunities  for  the  assimilation  of 
precise  and  beautiful  words.    He  believed  that  Latin 


VII.]  LANGUAGE  AND  INFLUENCE  195 

was  the  guard  and  natural  defence  of  the  English 
language ;  and  in  his  enthusiasm  for  the  rolling 
southern  music  he  was  certainly  inclined  to  underrate 
the  value  of  direct  and  rustic  forms  of  speech. 

In  a  passage  of  the  Vulgar  Errors,  he  has  let  us  into 
his  secret  thoughts.  He  says  that  in  writing  that 
book  in  English,  he  has  deliberately  Latinised  his 
vocabulary  in  order  to  reach  "  into  expressions  beyond 
mere  English  apprehensions."  He  has  "declared" 
himself  "  in  a  language  best  conceived,"  that  is  in  a 
language  crowded  with  classical  neologisms  introduced 
for  the  purpose  of  securing  accuracy  and  subtlety  of 
thought.  He  goes  on  to  say :  "  If  elegancy  still  pro- 
ceedeth,  and  English  pens  maintain  that  stream  [of 
new  words]  .  .  .,  we  shall  within  few  years  be  fain  to 
learn  Latin  to  understand  English,  and  a  work  will 
prove  of  equal  facility  in  either."  This  is  not  set 
down  in  ridicule  or  irony  ;  it  was  Browne's  conception 
of  "  elegancy,"  of  a  civilised  and  perfected  English,  a 
language  which  could  only  be  understood  by  those 
who  were  masters  of  Latin.  This  evidence  is  very 
precious,  for  it  leaves  us  in  no  doubt  of  Browne's 
intention,  and  explains  his  vocabulary  where  it  be- 
comes so  servilely  Latin  as  to  be  ugly.  He  had  come 
to  the  conclusion  that  classic  words  were  the  only 
legitimate  ones,  the  only  ones  which  interpreted  with 
elegance  the  thoughts  of  a  sensitive  and  cultivated 
man,  and  that  the  rest  were  barbarous.  There  was  a 
great  plausibility  in  this,  but  Browne's  mistake  was  to 
carry  it  so  far  as  to  undermine  the  integrity  of  the 
English  language.  It  was  thus  that  he  started  that 
"  effectual  injury  "  to  the  literary  taste  of  the  nation 
which  Coleridge  deplored. 


196  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

It  is  impossible  to  exculpate  Browne  from  tlie  charge 
of  using  adjectives  of  classical  extraction  which  are 
neither  necessary  nor  natural.  There  is  no  excuse 
for  writing  about  the  "pensile"  gardens  of  Babylon 
when  all  that  is  required  is  expressed  by  "  hanging  " 
gardens.  The  importance  of  the  nice  distinctions  that 
it  is  Browne's  design  to  mark,  often  does  not  justify 
the  ugliness  of  the  word  he  chooses.  The  disk  of  the 
sun-flower  is  "  honey-combed "  :  then,  why  say  that 
it  is  "favaginous  "  ?  "  Paralogical,"  which  scandalised 
even  Dr.  Johnson,  is  a  poor  substitute  for  "  unreason- 
able." "Salient"  animals  are  animals  that  jump; 
a  webbed  object  is  said  to  be  "  interwoven  telarly  "  ; 
we  must  not  explain  that  things  are  arranged  in  a 
regular  order,  but  that  they  "hold  a  wide  uni- 
vocacy."  All  these  examples,  it  chances,  are  taken 
by  turning  over  the  pages  of  The  Garden  of  Cyrus,  and 
the  trick  grew  upon  our  author.  But  even  Beligio 
Medici  speaks  of  the  "  omneity  "  of  God,  where  "  one- 
ness "  would  be  simpler  and  better ;  and  of  "  oneiro- 
criticism  "  for  the  interpretation  of  dreams. 

An  able  and  enthusiastic  admirer  of  Browne  has 
had  the  courage  to  defend  ^  the  whole  principle  involved 
in  these  creations.  To  this  critic,  the  phrase  in  the 
Vulgar  Errors,  "  a  work  desired  and  yet  desiderated," 
so  far  from  seeming  redundant,  seems  "delightful." 
To  the  ear  of  this  partial  reader,  "  digladiation  "  and 
"  quodlibetically  "  are  welcome,  and  even  "  exantla- 
tion"  to  be  tolerated.  We  follow  less  breathlessly 
when  the  same  modern  admirer  bids  us  appreciate 
the  romantic  attraction  of  sound  and  novelty  in  the 

1  In  the  Times  of  December  23, 1904. 


VII.]  LANGUAGE  AND  INFLUENCE  197 

phrase  "  the  hill  and  asperous  way  that  leadeth  unto 
the  house  of  sanity."  Here  the  introduction  of  a 
word  like  "asperous/'  although  it  adds  nothing  to 
the  idea  of  "rough,"  may  be  justified  by  beauty  of 
sound,  but  rarely  is  this  the  case  with  Browne's 
clumsy  audacities.  He  should  have  remembered  what 
Vaugelas,  the  wisest  of  all  grammarians,  said  on  the 
subject  of  words,  that  it  was  commonly  far  better  to 
consult  women  and  people  who  had  not  studied  than 
those  who  are  too  learnedly  oppressed  by  a  knowledge 
of  Latin  and  Greek.  If  that  was  true  for  the  French, 
it  was  surely  still  more  true  for  the  English,  and  we 
owe  no  thanks  to  persons  like  Browne,  who  have  tried 
to  make  us  call  man  an  equicrural  animal  when  all  we 
mean  is  that  his  legs  are  of  a  bigness.  Browne's  rock 
ahead  is  wrapping  the  trite  in  the  coronation-robes  of 
fine  language. 

It  is  odd  that,  when  he  pleases,  Browne  can  be  the 
most  lucid  of  writers,  and  employ  none  but  the  shortest 
and  plainest  of  words.  In  the  very  middle  of  the  up- 
lifted peroration  of  Urn-Burial  we  come  upon  this 
limpid  strain  of  music:  — 

"Life  is  a  pure  flame,  and  we  live  by  an  invisible  sun 
within  us.  A  small  fire  sufiiceth  for  life,  great  flames  seemed 
too  little  after  death,  while  men  vainly  affected  precious  pyres, 
and  to  burn  like  Sardanapalus.  But  the  wisdom  of  funeral 
laws  found  the  folly  of  prodigal  blazes,  and  reduced  undoing 
fires  unto  the  rule  of  sober  obsequies,  wherein  few  could 
be  so  mean  as  not  to  provide  wood,  pitch,  a  mourner,  and 
an  urn." 

Here  the  only  word  that  jars  upon  us  is  the 
Brownesque  one,  "prodigal." 

If  he  could  have  kept  to  this  level,  and  if  he  had 


198  SIR  THOMAS  BKOWNE  [chap. 

not  been  seduced  by  a  certain  obscure  romance  in  the 
terminology  of  late  Latin'  writers  like  Eaymond  Lully 
and  Paracelsus,  if,  -too,  lie  could  have  preserved  in 
its  purity  his  native  instinct  for  verbal  sonority,  his 
"  learned  sweetness  of  cadence,"  as  Pater  happily  calls 
it,  no  one  would  have  reproached  him  for  his  love  of 
order  and  decorum,  of  assonance  and  alliteration,  of 
all  the  curious  pomp  which  he  brooded  over  "  in  the 
areopagy  and  dark  tribunal  of  his  heart."  But  "  ex- 
antlation "  and  "  favaginous "  lift  their  ugly  faces  at 
us,  and  are  types  of  an  error  in  taste  which  does  much 
to  spoil  our  pleasure  in  writings  that  would  else  be 
almost  perfect. 

The  extravagantly  Latinised  vocabulary  of  Sir  Thomas 
Browne  had  a  direct  influence  on  the  style  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  when  the  expression  "  Brownism  "  was 
even  used  to  stigmatise  excessive  Anglo-Latin  diction. 
This  is  undoubtedly  what  Coleridge  had  in  mind ;  and 
this  influence  rose  to  its  height  when  Dr.  Samuel 
Johnson  became  acquainted  with  Browne's  works, 
and  permitted  them  to  be  one  of  the  models  upon 
which  he  "formed  his  style."  It  has  been  lately 
said  that  Boswell's  statement  that  Johnson  imitated 
Browne  must  be  taken  with  a  grain  of  salt ;  but 
Boswell  knew  what  he  was  talking  about,  and  he  is 
supported  by  Hawkins.  The  observation,  as  Napier 
remarked,  was  made  by  many  of  Johnson's  contem- 
poraries, and  the  fact,  indeed,  was  obvious.  Moreover, 
in  1756,  Johnson  was  drawn  by  admiration  of  the 
Christian  Morals  to  write  on  Browne  a  memoir,  which 
is  one  of  the  most  eloquent  of  his  minor  writings.  In 
the  course  of  this  memoir,  Johnson  defines  the  genius 
of  Browne,  as  it  displayed  itself  to  him,  in  words  which 


VII.]  LANGUAGE  AND  INFLUENCE  199 

are  valuable  as  indicating  the  point  of  view  accepted 
by  the  greatest  critic  of  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century :  — 

"  [Browne's]  style  is,  indeed,  a  tissue  of  many  languages ; 
a  mixture  of  heterogeneous  words,  brought  together  from 
distant  regions,  with  terms  originally  appropriated  to  one  art, 
and  drawn  by  violence  into  the  service  of  another.  He  must, 
however,  be  confessed  to  have  augmented  our  philosophical 
diction ;  and,  in  defence  of  his  uncommon  words  and  expres- 
sions, we  must  consider  that  he  had  uncommon  sentiments, 
and  was  not  content  to  express  in  many  words  that  idea  for 
which  any  language  could  supply  a  single  term.  But  his 
innovations  are  sometimes  pleasing,  and  his  temerities  happy. 
He  has  many  verba  ardentia,  forcible  expressions,  which  he 
would  never  have  found,  but  by  venturing  to  the  utmost 
verge  of  propriety,  and  flights  which  would  never  have  been 
reached,  but  by  one  who  had  very  little  fear  of  the  shame  of 
falling." 

The  earlier  part,  at  least,  of  this  criticism  might  be 
a  direct  apology  for  the  character  of  Dr.  Johnson's 
own  style,  and  we  observe  with  interest  that  he  makes 
no  reference  to  the  romantic,  the  imaginative,  element 
in  Browne's  diction,  this  being  a  matter  altogether 
outside  Johnson's  range  of  perception.  When  Browne 
says  "Man  is  a  noble  animal,  splendid  in  ashes  and 
pompous  in  the  grave,  solemnising  nativities  and  deaths 
with  equal  lustre,  nor  omitting  ceremonies  of  bravery 
in  the  infamy  of  his  nature,"  he  is  not  talking  John- 
sonese, good  or  bad ;  he  is  employing  his  Latinisms  to 
produce  a  certain  melancholy  music  which  was  raised 
above  Johnson's  pitch  of  hearing.  But  the  passage 
just  quoted  is  taken  from  Urn-Burial,  while  it  is 
evident  that  it  was  from  the  later  and  less  romantic 
Christian  Morals  that  Johnson  took  his  inspiration.    It 


200  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

was  this  work,  wliicli  is  far  from  being  of  Browne's 
best,  which  encouraged  Johnson,  and  with  him  a  whole 
school  of  rhetorial  writers  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
to  avoid  circumlocution  by  the  invention  of  superfluous 
words,  learned  but  pedantic,  in  which  darkness  was 
concentrated  without  being  dispelled.  It  was  Browne's 
misfortune,  until  his  genuine  merits  were  re-discovered 
and  asserted  by  Coleridge  and  Lamb,  to  serve  as  a 
sort  of  pattern  or  excuse  to  everybody  who  thrust 
a  needless  Latin  idiom  upon  the  language. 

If,  however,  Browne  may  seem  to  us  to  have  been 
not  careful  enough  of  the  integrity  of  the  English 
language,  nor  duly  sensitive  to  its  proper  balance 
of  elements,  his  genius  was  so  unique  that  we  hesi- 
tate to  call  what  would  be  crimes  in  others  more 
than  very  venial  faults  in  him.  "These  crumbling 
relics  and  long-fired  particles  superannuate  such 
expectations  '^  may  be  a  sentence  which  it  is  impos- 
sible to  defend  as  a  specimen  of  pure  and  nervous 
English,  but  it  has  its  perfect  propriety  in  a  solemn 
passage  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne.  Indeed,  it  is  language 
such  as  this  which  enables  us  to  comprehend  what  was 
the  singular  attraction  of  our  writer  for  Johnson. 
Mrs.  Thrale,  speaking  somewhere  of  the  literary  taste 
of  the  Lexicographer,  says,  with  witty  penetration, 
that  he  liked  plate  to  eat  off  better  than  highly-painted 
porcelain,  meaning  that  he  liked  a  sumptuous  solidity 
of  style  better  than  mere  elegance  and  dexterity.  In 
other  words,  Browne,  with  his  sonorous  weight,  pleased 
him  more  than  Addison  with  his  precision  and  delicacy 
and  brilliant  refinement.  In  fact,  if  we  allow  ourselves 
to  pursue  the  image,  we  can  find  nothing  which  suggests 
the  peculiar  art  of  Browne  better  than  pieces  of  solid 


VII.]  LANGUAGE   AND  INFLUENCE  201 

plate,  gold  or  silver,  elaborately  chased  and  stamped 
with  stately  coats  of  arms,  bearing  ostensibly  the  evi- 
dences of  a  lordly  habit  of  life,  and  fitted  for  solemn 
ceremonial.  That  these  are  sometimes  heavy  in  form, 
monotonous  and  yet  extravagant  in  ornament,  not  suit- 
able for  easy  household  purposes,  are  defects  inherent 
in  their  peculiar  quality  of  pomp. 

This  solemn  and  sententious  formality  grew  upon 
Browne  with  the  advance  of  years.  We  trace  it  in 
Religio  Medici,  although  it  is  there  commonly  subdued 
to  an  undertone  by  the  youth  and  vivacity  of  the 
writer.  But  in  Urn-Burial  and  in  A  Letter  to  a  Friend 
it  is  seen  in  its  full  richness ;  in  The  Garden  of  Cyrus  it 
has  lapsed  into  extravagance ;  and  in  Christian  Morals 
it  has  become  a  mannerism.  But  in  all  the  works  of 
Sir  Thomas  Browne,  even  in  the  comparatively  colour- 
less Vulgar  Errors,  it  is  there  as  a  central  characteristic 
of  his  style,  though  not  always  presented  to  the  reader. 
Whether  the  stately  movement  pleases  us  now  or  not 
depends  entirely  upon  the  amount  of  emotion  which 
vibrates  through  the  passage.  When  Browne  is  ex- 
tremely moved  by  his  imagination  he  can  hardly  be 
too  grandiloquent ;  we  accept  his  most  audacious 
"  Brownisms  "  with  delight.  He  leads  us,  at  his  will, 
through  his  labyrinths  of  language,  and  every  turn 
of  the  path  displays  some  new  sombre  beauty,  brings 
forward  to  our  ears  some  new  strain  of  melancholy 
faery  music. 

From  these,  however,  we  sometimes  break  away  to 
listen  to  him  in  a  plainer  mood.  In  many  of  the 
pages  of  Religio  Medici  he  writes  with  as  little  display 
of  the  buskin,  with  as  little  of  the  dragging  robe  of 
purple,  as  any  one  who  ever  used  English  as  a  straight- 


202  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

forward  veMcle  for  tlie  expression  of  his  thoughts.  It 
is  well  that  we  should  turn,  from  too  persistent  con- 
templation of  Browne's  ecstasies,  to  such  an  easy- 
strenuous  example  of  his  personal,  his  confidential, 
manner,  as  this  reflection  upon  martyrdom,  which 
reveals  so  plainly  his  private  emotion :  — 

"  l^ow,  as  all  that  die  in  the  war  are  not  termed  soldiers,  so 
neither  can  I  properly  terra  all  those  that  suffer  in  matters  of 
religion,  martyrs.  The  Council  of  Constance  condemns  John 
Huss  for  a  heretic.  The  stories  of  his  own  party  style  him 
a  martyr.  He  must  needs  offend  the  divinity  of  both,  that 
says  he  was  neither  the  one  nor  the  other.  There  are  many, 
questionless,  canonised  on  earth  that  shall  never  be  saints  in 
Heaven ;  and  have  their  names  in  histories  and  martyrologies, 
who,  in  the  eyes  of  God,  are  not  so  perfect  martyrs  as  was 
that  wise  heathen,  Socrates,  that  suffered  on  a  fundamental 
point  of  religion,  the  Unity  of  God.  I  have  often  pitied  the 
miserable  bishop  that  suffered  in  the  cause  of  Antipodes,^  yet 
cannot  choose  but  accuse  him  of  as  much  madness  for  exposing 
his  life  on  such  a  trifle,  as  those  of  ignorance  and  folly,  that 
condemned  him.  I  think  my  conscience  will  not  give  me 
the  lie,  if  I  say  there  are  not  many  extant  that  in  a  noble 
way  fear  the  face  of  death  less  than  myself.  Yet,  from  the 
moral  duty  I  owe  to  the  commandment  of  God,  and  the 
natural  respects  that  I  tender  unto  the  conservation  of  my 
essence  and  being,  I  would  not  perish  upon  a  ceremony, 
politic  points,  or  indifferency.  Nor  is  my  belief  of  that  un- 
tractable  temper,  as  not  to  bow  at  their  obstacles,  or  connive 
at  matters  wherein  there  are  not  manifest  impieties.  The 
leaven,  therefore,  and  ferment  of  all,  not  only  civil-  but  reli- 
gious actions,  is  wisdom,  without  which,  to  commit  ourselves 
to  the  flames  is  homicide,  and,  I  fear,  but  to  pass  through  one 
fire  into  another." 

1  This  was  Virgilius,  Bishop  of  Salzburg,  who  is  said  to  have 
been  burned  for  believing  that  there  were  "  a  good  rascally  sort 
of  topsy-turvy  fellows"  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  globe. 
Browne's  sympathy  with  this  prelate  is  very  characteristic. 


VII.]  LANGUAGE   AND   INFLUENCE  203 

Few  writers  are  more  attractive  than  Browne  to  the 
technical  student  of  literature,  since  there  are  few  in 
whom  the  matter,  in  its  crudest  sense,  is  so  completely 
subordinated  to  the  manner.  It  is  obvious  that  to 
Browne  the  opportunity  of  producing  an  aesthetic  sen- 
sation on  the  nerves  of  the  reader  was  the  factor  which 
led  him  to  write.  He  wished  to  stimulate,  perhaps 
even  to  dazzle  and  startle,  rather  than  to  instruct  his 
disciples.  We  may  believe  the  felicities  of  Jeremy 
Taylor  and  the  wit  of  Fuller  to  have  been  partly  ac- 
cidental, or  at  least  instinctive,  caused  by  the  authors' 
flights  of  enthusiasm.  We  may  imagine  that  these 
writers  did  not  know  how  magnificent  they  were.  But 
Browne,  we  may  be  sure,  was  never  carried  away. 
His  effects  are  closely  studied,  they  are  the  result  of 
forethought  and  anxious  contrivance.  We  know,  from 
all  sources,  that  he  was  a  very  punctilious  writer,  and 
he  believed  that  the  art  of  composition  was  to  be 
learned.  We  have  seen  him  solicitous  that  each  of 
his  sons  should  learn  it,  and  all  they  lacked  was  just 
the  essential  thing,  their  father's  ineffable  genius.  But 
he  had  always  worked  as  though  he  had  no  genius 
at  all,  with  a  modest  devotion  to  the  principles  of 
the  mysterious  art  of  prose. 

The  result,  of  course,  was  that  his  style  was  highly 
artificial ;  and  those  whose  passion  for  simplicity  leads 
them  to  reject  everything  that  is  not  slipshod  and 
careless  will  find  nothing  in  the  writings  of  Sir 
Thomas  Browne  to  attract  them.  But  readers  who 
are  not  offended  by  the  evidences  of  painstaking  may 
find  an  exquisite  pleasure  in  what  Mr.  Saintsbury  has 
admirably  called  the  "  marquetry  "  of  Browne's  style. 
It  is  all  veneered  with  the  tortoise-shell  of  his  learning, 


204  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

the  stained  ivory  of  his  meditations  upon  life,  and  it 
is  not  carved  out  in  bold  forms,  with  a  chisel  or  on  a 
lathe,  but,  with  the  daintiest  care,  fragments,  some- 
times of  no  great  intrinsic  value,  are  fitted  into  the 
brilliant  surface-pattern.  It  is  certain  that  he  had 
not  the  temper  of  those  who  cover  large  spaces  with 
the  creations  of  their  fancy.  For  this  a  great  liquidity 
of  mind  is  required ;  the  imagination  must  move  easily 
and  rapidly,  and  wash  across  wide  areas  of  thought. 
There  was  a  certain  stagnation  of  talent  in  Sir  Thomas 
Browne.  Of  a  singularly  placid  and  even  temper,  his 
mind  was  never  quite  fluid,  there  was  a  static  element 
in  it.  He  liked  it  to  move  very  gently,  to  return  soon 
to  the  point  whence  it  started,  to  remain  fantastically 
controlled  and  gorgeously  reserved. 

When  he  was,  as  he  said,  "shaking  hands  with 
delight,  in  his  warm  blood  and  canicular  days,"  he 
felt  the  difficulty,  as  Montaigne  had  felt  it  before  him, 
of  attaining  to  and  retaining  the  ideal  state  of  modera- 
tion. In  that  extravagant  age,  it  was  Browne's  great 
desire  to  preserve  a  delicate  comprehension  of  dis- 
tinctions. As  he  grew  older,  he  resigned,  perhaps,  a 
little  of  the  courage  with  which  he  started.  Beginning 
by  resolving  to  ally  himself  to  Christianity,  he  re- 
moved the  contest  of  faith  from  the  ground  of  reason 
and  science,  and  placed  it  in  a  mystery.  It  is  very 
difficult  not  to  treat  the  author  of  Religio  Medici  as  a 
scoffer,  because  of  his  scepticism.  But  to  do  so,  as  we 
have  attempted  to  show,  is  to  commit  an  injustice. 
Like  Montaigne,  once  more,  and  in  a  fuller  sense  than 
Montaigne,  Browne  was  indignant  that  a  man  should 
possess  a  religion  "  contradictoire  a  celle  qu'il  avait  en 
son  ccfeur."     But  in  process  of  time,  in  his  moderation 


VII.]  LANGUAGE   AND   INFLUENCE  205 

and  his  scepticism,  his  own  heart  became  enclosed,  not 
in  a  stone,  but  in  a  sort  of  cold  crystal.  He  had  never 
had,  really,  Montaigne's  passion  for  truth;  and  his 
religion  became  a  thing  which  lay  there,  ostensible 
and  shining,  but  holding  no  communication  with  his 
human  sympathy,  his  imagination  or  his  style. 

What  inspired    Browne  to    a    greater    height    of 
fervour  than  any  other  subject  was  the  contemplation 
of  death.     This  underlies  almost  every  one  of  his  most 
majestic  passages.     It  might  be   said  of  him,   in  a 
curious  sense,  what  one  of  his  French  contemporaries 
declared,  "  II  nous  f  aut,  si  nous  esperons  de  parvenir  a 
quelque  gloire,  hanter  avec  les  morts."     Certainly  it  is 
in  the  company  of  those  who  are  "  lost  in  the  uncom- 
fortable night  of  nothing,"  who  "vainly  contriving 
their  bodies  in  sweet  consistencies,  to  attend  the  return 
of  their   souls,"   have  found   that   "all  was  vanity, 
feeding  the  wind  and  folly  "  ;  it  is  in  the  contemplation 
of  the  millions  over  whom  "  the  iniquity  of  oblivion 
blindly  scattereth  her  poppy,"  that  Sir  Thomas  Browne 
reaches  his  most  glorious  flights  of  imagination.     He 
is  the  laureate  of  the  forgotten  dead,  of  those  who  had 
discovered,  what  he  from  the  first  divined,  that  this  loud 
world  is  nothing  but  "a  dream  and  a  mock-show." 
In  the  presence  of  a  haunting  sense  of  the  fragility  of 
time,  of  the  faint  mark  we  all  make  on  life,  something 
less  durable  than  the  shadow  of  a  leaf  or  a  breath  upon 
a  mirror,  Sir  Thomas  Browne  decides  that  "  restless 
unquiet  for  the  diuturnity  of  our  memories  seems  a 
vanity  almost  out  of  date,  and  a  superannuated  piece 
of  folly."     We  must  do  our  daily  round  of  duty;  we 
may  polish  the  bits  of  intellectual  ornament  which  are 
our  innocent  occasional  pastime,  we  may  take  refuge 


206  SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  [chap. 

from  the  sad  pressure  of  infinity  in  speculation,  but 
to  strive  and  cry,  or  to  exaggerate  the  importance  of 
things  around  us,  or  of  ourselves,  or  of  the  world  itself, 
would  be  nothing  better  than  a  waste  of  energy. 

If  we  take  this  view  of  the  temperament  of  Sir 
Thomas  Browne,  we  need  feel  no  surprise  that  his 
actual  performance,  from  the  scholar's  point  of  view, 
was  curiously  inadequate  to  what  we  must  suppose  to 
have  been  his  ambitions.  These  were  encyclopaedic, 
or  rather  may  have  been,  for  we  know  not  what  it  was 
that  he  placed  before  himself  as  his  aim  in  life.  His 
accumulated  knowledge,  however,  was  not  allowed  to 
crush  him.  He  shrank,  indeed,  from  the  excessive 
labours  which,  alike  in  science  and  literature,  bow 
a  man  to  the  earth  with  a  composite  sense  of  the 
infinitude  of  nature  and  his  own  infirmity.  Browne 
sighs,  faintly,  for  more  leisure;  laments,  conven- 
tionally, the  pressure  of  professional  duties.  But  he 
does  not  express  these  discomforts  as  Bacon  or  as 
Selden  might.  He  does  not  chafe  against  the  dis- 
ability, he  does  not  view  the  arrival  of  a  messenger 
from  a  patient's  bedside  with  vexation  and  alarm.  We 
have  the  feeling  that  such  fragments  as  he  has  left  us 
—  and  all  his  books  are  fragments  —  occupied  him 
lightly,  were  easily  concluded,  satisfied  the  literary 
craving  through  months  and  even  years  of  inactivity. 
Attention  has  been  called  in  an  earlier  part  of  this 
memoir  to  the  fact  that  once,  through  the  year  1658, 
when  he  had  reached  the  age  of  fifty-three,  he  was 
roused  to  active  production  and  to  something  of  the 
excitement  with  which  a  poet  pours  out  his  lyrical 
verses  in  full  enthusiasm.  But  this  mood  sank 
immediately,  and  if  we  except  the  compositions  of 


VII.]  LANGUAGE  AND   INFLUENCE  207 

that  year,  what  have  we?  We  have  a  charming 
fragment  of  mental  autobiography,  an  incomplete 
criticism  of  some  wide  fields  of  natural  history,  an 
episode  in  the  career  of  a  physician,  and  some  de- 
sultory jottings  on  ethics. 

In  spite  of  this,  it  would  be  an  error  to  consider  the 
Norwich  doctor  as  an  amateur  in  literature.  If  his 
works  are  few,  and  fragmentary,  it  seems  to  be  because 
he  concluded  that  the  manner  of  saying  a  thing  was 
all-important,  and  because  he  could  often  compress 
the  entire  splendour  of  his  art  within  a  small  compass. 
We  must  admit  that  if  this  was  his  theory,  he  was 
justified  in  it.  He  is  said  to  have  dreamed  for  forty 
years  about  a  continuation  of  Religio  Medici]  but  could 
he  have  recaptured  the  delicate  charm  of  adolescence, 
could  he  have  added  to  our  gratified  approval  of  his 
adroitness  ?  If  he  had  given  a  dozen  clinical  experi- 
ences in  detail,  would  they  have  increased  our  ad- 
miration of  the  penetrative  skill  shown  in  A  Letter 
to  a  Friend  ?  One  find  of  rough  pots  at  Walsingham 
inspired  a  masterpiece  in  Urn-Burial  \  would  a  vast 
tome  on  the  antiquities  of  Norfolk  have  been  anything 
but  a  disappointment  to  us  ?  And  if  we  could  dis- 
cover that  he  had  composed  the  huge  thesaurus  on 
horticulture  of  which  there  was  talk  in  his  correspon- 
dence with  Evelyn,  should  we  be  willing  to  exchange 
for  it  the  last  brief  chapter  of  The  Garden  of  Cyrus  ? 
Browne's  medical  experience  had  made  him  keenly 
aware  of  the  small  horizon  of  human  life,  and  it  is 
difficult  to  believe  that  he  did  not  consciously  restrict 
himself  to  the  creation  of  a  few  matters  which  should 
be  exquisite,  and  his  own,  and  self-sufficing. 


INDEX 


Account  of  Island,  alias  Iceland, 
146. 

Acetaria  (Evelyn),  131. 

Aldrovandi,  Ulisse  (Pontifex 
Maximus),  77,  78,  81,  83,  87. 

Amyot,  Thomas,  v. 

Anthony  a  Wood,  5. 

Anthropometamorphosis  (Bul- 
wer),  190. 

Arcadia  (Sannazaro),  22  n. 

(Sidney),  22  n. 

Arcana  Mlcrocosmi  (Koss),  100. 

Arcanum  of  Hermetic  Philoso- 
phy (Dee),  136. 

Aristotle,  70,  74,  81. 

Ashmole,  Elias,  136,  137. 


Bacon,  Dr.  Arthur,  80  n. 

Sir  Edmund,  of  Redgrave, 

121,  148. 

Nicholas,  121, 122,  132, 167. 

Francis,  52,  72,  73,  75. 

Bagford,  John,  176. 

Bates,  Henry,  63. 

Benlowes,  Edward,  63. 

Bentley,  Richard,  19. 

Boyle,  Robert,  153. 

Brampton  Urns,  Hi. 

Broadgates  Hall  (Oxford) ,  4. 

Browne,  Anne,  159,  IW. 

Dorothy.  See  Dorothy  Mile- 
ham. 

Dr.  Edward,  7,   19,  59,  60, 


82  n.,  144-6,  151,  155-7,  158-9, 
163,  164,  167,  188-9. 

Browne,  Richard,  3. 

Sir  Thomas,  pedigree,  1-2; 

1 71. ;  parentage,  2 ;  grandpar- 
ents, 2,  3,  4;  alternative  spell- 
ing of  name,  2  n. ;  infancy, 
2-3;  death  of  father,  3;  step- 
father, 4,  5 ;  youth,  4-24 ;  gains 
scholarship  at  Winchester,  4; 
graduates  from  Pembroke 
(Broadgates  Hall),  4,  5;  his 
tutor,  4-5,  23;  travels  in 
France  and  Italy,  7;  attitude 
towards  foreign  habits  and 
customs,  8;  studies  at  Mont- 
pellier,  10-12 ;  at  Padua,  12-15 ; 
at  Ley  den,  15-16 ;  takes  medi- 
cal degree  there,  16;  advan- 
tages gained  intellectually, 
16-17;  returns  to  England, 
18  ;  resides  at  Halifax,  19; 
incorporated  doctor  of  physic 
at  Oxford,  23;  marriage,  24; 
children,  24, 141 ;  education  of, 
140-1 ;  their  adoration  for  him, 
141;  advice  to  sons,  142,  143, 
151 ;  fame  as  a  physician,  24, 
148;  his  creed,  28;  love  for 
small  things,  34-5,  86 ;  love  of 
nature,  35,  71;  superstition, 
39,  73;  ideas  on  resurrection 
of  the  body,  42;  on  hell  and 
eternal  punishment,  43-4; 
opinion  of  himself,  47;  Euro- 
pean fame,  60;  disciples,  63, 
100,    104,    106,    108 ;    religious 


209 


210 


INDEX 


and  scientific  attitude,  65;  in- 
terest in  botany,  6-7, 76-7 ;  dis- 
sects whale,  79-80 ;  name  used 
fraudulently,  101 ;  staunchness 
as  Royalist,  103;  declines  to 
contribute  towards  regaining 
Newcastle,  103;  his  patients, 
103,   107;     fame   in  Norwich, 

104  ;  genius  for  friendship, 
104-5, 106, 184-5 ;  use  of  Greek, 

105  ;  consulted  as  to  course 
of  reading,  106  ;  particular 
friends,  108,  121,  140,  148,  175, 
181;  main  interests,  108;  in- 
terest in  Scandinavian  history, 
115;  familiarity  with  Dante's 
writings,  115 ;  his  vault  broken 
into,  116;  solicitude  with  re- 
gard to  human  body,  117 ;  dis- 
covery of  adipocere,  117-18; 
gardening  experiments,  133  ; 
non-inclusion  in  Royal  Society, 
134,  137,  153-4,  158 ;  reputation 
as  an  astrologer,  134  ;  joy  at 
return  of  royalty,  139;  action 
with  regard  to  witchcraft,  147- 
50  ;  curious  experience,  150 ; 
made  Hon.  Fellow  College  of 
Physicians,  153 ;  knighted, 
160-1 ;  king  visits  him,  161  n. ; 
house  described  by  Evelyn, 
162 ;  later  days  devoted  to 
literature  and  science,  162  ; 
grows  pietistic,  162,  163 ;  fond- 
ness for  grandson,  163;  fail- 
ing health,  164;  intellectual 
vivacity  retained,  164 ;  date  of 
will,  164  ;  son's  appointment 
to  St,  Bartholomew's  Hospital, 
164  ;  death,  164  ;  occasional 
melancholy,  165 ;  death  of 
wife,  165 ;  vast  range  of  read- 
ing, 168 ;  admiration  for  Rabe- 
lais, 168;  imitation  of,  168; 
ideas  on  death,  173-4 ;  present 
at  digging  up  of  urns,  174-5; 
linguistic  acquirements,  185-6 ; 


memory,  186-7 ;  recognition  of 
people,  187 ;  manner,  139,  187 ; 
isolated  intellectual  position, 
188  ;  lack  of  sympathy  with 
contemporaneous  literature, 
191-2;  as  a  sceptic,  204-5;  cor- 
respondence with  Evelyn,  130, 
134 ;  Nicholas  Bacon,  132 ;  Ash- 
mole,  137;  sons,  137-8,  140; 
family,  182,  186 ;  Jdnsson,  146 ; 
Dr.  Oldenburg,  157-8. 

Personal  appearance,  182  ; 
dress,  182;  domestic  relations, 
182-3. 

Writings :  —  verses  among 
Sloane  MSS.,  5-6;  poetry,  19, 
34 ;  apology  for  youthful  work, 
18,  19  ;  compared  with  Des- 
cartes, 37  ;  harmony  of  lan- 
guage, 38,  40,  47,  49;  compared 
with  Pascal,  65-6;  not  of  sci- 
entific interest,  94,  190;  helps 
Evelyn  with  French  Gardi- 
ner, 130,  131;  contribution  to 
treatment  of  horticulture,  132 ; 
Dutch  edition  of,  154;  origi- 
nality of,  170, 172 ;  incomplete- 
ness of  published  works,  176; 
style,  191-207. 

Browne,    Thomas    (son),    141-4, 
151-3. 

(grandfather) ,  2. 

(grandson),  163-4. 

Buckle,  Henry  Thomas,  98,  99. 

Buddseus,  of  Jena,  60. 

Bulwer,  John,  190. 

Burton,  Hezekiah,  175. 

Bury  St.  Edmunds,  147, 150. 

0 

Caius,  John,  13. 

Cambridge,    106,   107,   141,   143, 

144. 
Cardan,  Jerome,  74,  83,  98,  134. 
Cecil,  Sir  Edward,  5. 
Certain  Miscellany  Tracts^  167. 


INDEX 


211 


Cheke,  Sir  Hatton,  5. 

Cheshire,  1. 

Christian  Morals,  176-9 ;  discov- 
ery of  MS.,  176 ;  criticisms,  178 ; 
quoted,  179-80;  181,  190,  198, 
199,  201. 

Coleridge,  S.  T.,  49,  58,  64-5,  123, 
125, 194,  198,  200. 

Columbo,  Realdo,  13,  14. 

Commonplace  Book  (Browne), 
22,  149. 

Cornwallis,  Lord,  148. 

Craigie,  Mr.  W.  A.,  124. 

Crooke,  Andrew,  50,  54,  55. 

Cullender,  Rose,  39,  147-50. 

D 

Dee,  Arthur,  135-6. 

De      Funerihus      Bomanorum 

(Kirchmann),  115. 
Descartes,  12,  16,  32,  33,  37,  38, 

135  n. 
De  Vega,  Lope,  22  n. 
Devonshire,  Countess  of,  1. 
De    Vulgi  Errorihus  (Joubert), 

68,  69. 
Digby,  Sir  Kenelm,  52-6, 61-2, 63. 
Dobson,  Mr.  Austin,  150  n. 
Donne,  Dr.,  18,  19. 
Don  Quixote  (Cervantes),  22,  n. 
Downham,  John,  63. 
Dryden,  48,  55. 
Dugdale,  Sir  William,  137,  138, 

167. 
Duny,  Amy,  39, 147-50. 
Dutton,  Lady,  4. 
Sir  Thomas,  4,  5,  6. 

E 

East  Bloodyburgh  Furlong,  108. 
Eudoza  (Robinson),  100. 
Eustachio,  13. 
Evans,  Sir  John,  109. 
Evelyn,  John,  15,  108,  122,  130-4, 
161 ;  Diary  quoted,  162 ;  167. 


Fabrizio,   Girolamo,   of   Acqua- 

pendente,  13,  14. 
Faerie  Queene  (Spenser),  22  m. 
Fairfax,    Anne.      See    Browne, 

Anne. 
Falloppio,  Gabriele,  13. 
Fitzmaurice-Kelly,  Mr.   James, 

vi,  22  w. 
Foreest,  Pieter  van,  16. 
France,  6,  7,  9, 17,  18,  32,  33,  59, 

141-6,  154. 
French  Gardiner  (Evelyn),  130. 

G 

Galen,  13,  14, 18,  70,  134. 

Galileo,  14,  33. 

Garden  of  Cyrus,  The,  121-38; 
full  title,  123 ;  dedicatory  letter, 
121;  use  of  the  word  "quin- 
cunx," 123-7;  quoted,  124,  126, 
127-8,  129,  131-2,  137,  169,  190, 
201,  207. 

Garraway,  Anne,  2. 

Paul,  2,  4. 

Sir  Henry,  2. 

Geikie,  Sir  Archibald,  vi,  147  n., 
158  n. 

Gesner,  Konrad,  78. 

Gillingham  Hall,  122, 

Gizursson,  Brynjolf,  146. 

Greenhill,  Dr.,  v,  vi,  51,  178. 

Griindahl,  Johann,  154. 

Gruter,  Isaac,  101. 

Pieter,  of  Dixmuid,  101  n. 

H 

Hale,  Sir  Matthew,  147, 148,  149. 
Halifax,  19,  106. 

Hall,    Joseph    (Bishop   of    Nor- 
wich), 107,  140. 
Harvey,  Henry,  13,  14,  75,  105. 
Herbal  (Gerard),  76. 
Herbert,  Lord  of  Cherbury,  60. 


212 


INDEX 


Hippocrates,  7,  70. 

Historia  Animalium  (Gesner),  78. 

History  of  Civilisation  (Buckle), 

98. 
of  the    Cossacks    (Edward 

Browne),  158. 
of  Four-Footed  Beasts  (Rev. 

Edward  Topsell,  after  Gesner), 

78. 
^—  oflmbanking  and  Draining 

of  divers  Fens  and  Marshes 

(Dugdale),  137. 
of  Serpents   (Rev.  Edward 

Topsell,  after  Gesner),  78. 
Hobbes,  Thomas,  60. 
Holland,  Philemon,  85. 
Hortus  Eystettensis  (Besler),  122. 
Hudibras  (Butler),  63,  191. 
Huxley,  37. 
Hydriotaphia :  Urn-Burial,  112. 


Iceland,  146, 147, 147  n. 
Instauratio  (Bacon),  72. 
Ireland,  5,  6. 
Italy,  7,  10, 17, 18,  32. 


Jeffery,  Dr.  John  (Archdeacon  of 

Norwich),  176-7. 
Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  4,  5,  21, 

63,  193,  195,  196,  198-200. 
Jonas,  Theodorus.    See  Jdnsson, 

Theodor. 
Jdnsson,  Theodor,  146. 
Joubert,  Dr.  Laurent,  68. 
Juliers,  5. 

K 

Keeling,  Serjeant,  148. 
Keighley,  Anne,  2. 
Kirchmann,  Johann,  of  Liibeck, 
115,  116. 


Lancashire,  39. 

Lankester,  Professor  E.  Eay,  93. 

La  Rochelle,  8. 

Le  Gros,  Thomas,  of  Crostwick, 

111,  121. 
Le  Neve,  Peter,  1. 
L'Estrange,  Sir  Hamon,  80  w., 

107. 
Letter  to  a  Friend,  A,  162,  169, 

170;   quoted,  171-2,   173;    174, 

177,  201,  207. 
"  Leucomb  "  window,  a,  150. 
Lewes  (Sussex),  2. 
Lewin,     Justinian     (afterwards 

Sir),  23. 
Leyden,  University  of,    15,   16, 

57,  58. 
Liberty    of   Prophesying,     The 

(Jeremy  Taylor),  23. 
Life  of  Cowley  (Sprat),  181. 
Lincoln  College,  4. 
Lushington,  Dr.  Thomas,  4,  23. 
Lycidas  (Milton),  110. 
Lyttelton,  Elizabeth,  n^e  Browne, 

2,  174,  176,  177. 
Captain  George,  174. 


M 


Magnus,  Albertus,  70,  81,  99. 

Marchetti,  Pietro,  14. 

Marshall,  Mr.  E.  H.,  vi. 

Marshall,  William,  51. 

Medicina  Statica  (Sanctoro  Sanc- 
torio),  14. 

Medicus  Medicatus :  or  the  Phy- 
sician's Religion  cur'd  by  a 
lenitive  or  gentle  potion  (Alex- 
ander Ross) ,  63. 

M4moires  pour  servir  a  VHistoire 
de  la  Faculte  de  M6decine  de 
Montpellier  (Jean  Astruc), 
12  n. 

Merrett,  Dr.,  80  n. 

Merryweather,  John,  57,  58. 


INDEX 


213 


Michael-le-Quern,  St.,  parish  of, 

2,3. 
Mileham,  Dorothy,  24,  151,  185. 
Milton,  3. 

Mitchell,  Dr.  P.  Chalmers,  vi. 
Moltke,  Levin  Nicholas,  59,  60. 
Moltkius,  8  n. 
Monastico7i  (Dugdale),  138. 
Montaigne,  20,  45,  47,  172,  184, 

204,  205. 
Montpellier,  8-12,  17,  40,  68,  74, 

106. 
Moore,  Dr.  Norman,  vi,  12  n. 
"  Museum  Clausum,"  168. 

N 

Nature^s  Cabinet  Unlocked,  101. 

Norfolk,  1,  23,  24,  78,  80, 102, 103, 
108,  109,  112,  138,  160,  161,  162, 
167,  181. 

Norroy,  King-at-Arms,  1. 

Norwich,  1,  23,  24,  35,  39,  40,  55, 
58,  64,  67,  81,  82  n.,  102,  103, 
104,  106, 107,  108,  116,  120,  122, 
133,  134,  135,  136,  137,  139,  140, 
141,  142, 144,  145,  150,  151,  153, 
154,  155, 158,  159,  160,  163,  175, 
181, 188,  189. 

Novum  Organum  (Bacon),  72, 
73-4. 

O 

Observations  upon  Religio  Medici 

(Digby),55,  56,  61-2. 
Observations  upon  several  Plants 

mentioned  in  Scripture,  132; 

167-9. 
GEdipus,  30,  36. 
Oldenburg,  Henry,  147  n.,  157, 

158. 
Oxford,  7, 15,  19,  23. 


Padua,  12, 13,  14,  15,  92, 156. 
Paracelsus,  40,  74,  134,  198. 
Paradisus  (Parkinson) ,  76. 


Paradoxa  Medica  ( Joubert) ,  68. 
Pascal,  33,  65,  66,  67. 
Paston,  Sir  William,  108. 
Robert,  Earl  of  Yarmouth, 

108,  167. 
Pater,  Walter,  95,  169,  198. 
Patin,  Guy,  57-8,  59,  60,  145. 
Pedigree  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne, 

The,  1  n. 
Peile,  Dr.  John,  107. 
Pembroke  College,  Oxford,  4,  5, 

23. 
Picara  Justinia,  22  n. 
*'  Plants    mentioned    in    Scrip- 
ture."   Qee  Observations  upon 

several  Plants  mentioned   in 

Scripture. 
Pliny,  76,  77,  83,  85. 
Poems  (Dr.  Donne),  18. 

(Milton),  56. 

Pontifex  Maximus.    See   Aldro- 

vandi. 
Posthumous  Works,  147  w.,  166-7, 

174, 176. 
Power,  Dr.  Henry,  43,  105,  106, 

107,  107  n.,  158. 
Praxis  Medica  (Lazare  Riviere) , 

12. 
Primrose,  Dr.  James,  74. 
Pseudodoxia  Epidemica,  58,  68, 

100,    102.      See    also    Vulgar 

Errors. 
Pyrrhus,  King,  117. 


R 


Religio  Medici,  12;  date  of,  19; 
place  of  composition,  19;  pref- 
ace to  first  edition,  19-20;  not 
for  publication,  20-1;  22,  25- 
67  ;  published  by  Andrew 
Crooke,  50;  fantastic  frontis- 
piece, 51;  "imperfect"  copies, 
51 ;  first  authorised  edition,  55 ; 
foreign  editions,  57;  Annota- 
tions (Moltke),  59,  60;  68,  96, 
98  seq.,  108,  110,  120,  145,  150; 


214 


INDEX 


Dutch  edition,  154;  161,  162, 
165 ;  last  edition,  166 ;  designed 
completion,  176 ;  201 ;  (quoted) , 
28,  29,  36,  42-3,  48,  202. 

Bepertorium,  175-6. 

Reynolds,  Edward  (Bishop  of 
Norwich),  140. 

"Riverius."    jSee  Riviere. 

Riviere,  Lazare,  12. 

Robinson,  John,  100. 

Ross,  Alexander,  63,  64, 100. 


S 


Sackville,  Edward,  Earl  of  Dor- 
set, 52,  53,  54. 
Saintsbury,  Mr.  George,  203. 
St.  Peter  Mancroft,  116, 117. 
Salmasius,  57,  189. 
Scaliger,  83. 

Smith,  Thomas,  106,  107. 
Sylvius  ■(Francis  de  le  Boe),  16. 


Taylor,  Jeremy,  23,  191. 
Tenison,  Thomas  (Archbishop), 

132,  163,  166,  167, 169,  174,  176, 

181. 
Thacker,  Thomas,  160. 
Topsell,  Edward,  78. 
Traits  du  Monde  (Descartes),  33. 


U 


University  of  Medicine,  11. 

Upton,  1. 

Urn-Burial,  102-21, 109, 110,  111, 


113;  (quoted),  112,  113-4,  119- 
20;  131,  137,  166,  169,  174,  189, 
190,  197,  199,  201. 
Urquhart,  Sir  Thomas,  168  n. 


Van  Helmont,  Jan  Baptista,  15. 

Van  Leeuwenhoek,  Anton,  92. 

Vesalius  (Andrea  Vesale) ,  13. 

Virgilius  (Bishop  of  Salzburg), 
202  n. 

Vulgar  Errors,  35;  68-101;  on 
the  mole,  82-3;  swan,  83-5; 
glow-worm,  85-6;  griffin,  87- 
8;  salamander,  88-9;  basi- 
lisk, 90 ;  human  body,  91 ;  pig- 
mies, 91 ;  pelican,  92 ;  lampries, 
93.  Scientific  value  of,  93; 
philosophical  aim  of,  95;  107, 
110,  117,  120;  translation  of, 
146;  into  low  Dutch,  155;  161, 
166;  190,  195,  196,  201.  See 
also  Pseudodoxia  Epidemica. 

Vulgi  in  Medicina  Erroribus 
(Primrose),  74r-5. 

W 

Wagner,  Tobias,  60. 
Waller,  Edmund,  3. 
Walsingham,  108,  109,  113,  118, 

129,  207. 
Wesling,  John,  14. 
Whitefoot,  Rev.  John,  4,  24, 181, 

183. 
Wilkin,  Simon,  v,  133, 158  n. 
Williams,  Mr.  Charles,  1  n.,  116. 
Winchester,  4,  9, 


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